A Woman in Travails
by DrowinginRedInk
Summary: Scout Finch is returning home to Maycomb, the one place on earth she hates most. It holds too many memories, and she has enough trouble leaving them behind as it is. Go Set a Watchman AU, where Halloween 1935 went much worse for Scout.
1. Prologue

Scout Finch had a sacred tradition on October 31st. Every year, she would turn down all invitations to costume parties and evenings of revelry, buy a bottle of whiskey and a large carton of cigarettes, and attempt to finish them both in one night while ignoring the ringing of her phone.

By then, she had spent a decade shutting herself off from any human contact for one night every year, and so why her family and friends still went to the trouble of calling long-distance remained an enigma. She knew that they wanted to make sure she was alright, at least in theory, but she would have thought in the 16 years since they'd have learned it wasn't something she wanted to talk about. Still, in an effort to show that she was at least still alive, sometime around the end of the evening, when she could scarcely stand and was about to go to bed before she collapsed, she'd always pick up one call, immediately asking "Who is it?" In previous years, she had gotten hold of Atticus, Alexandra, Henry and of course Jack, and every year, her response was the same. "Fuck off." Scout was convinced one year she had heard her aunt faint before she slammed down the phone.

That year, though, her phone rang continuously. Even though the band of worriers in Maycomb was persistent, they usually gave her a few moments to breathe before trying again. Whoever was phoning her now was persistent, and it was enough to make believe something even worse had happened on October 31st. In that moment, it was a delightful thought. She would no longer hold a monopoly on Maycomb's pity during the month surrounding it. Whoever had went and died, and for it to be worse than what she'd gone through they had to have died, would have died anyway, so thank heaven above, they'd picked the best possible date.

She thought it best to figure out who it was, if only to gauge how much attention it would draw away from her, so she picked up her phone and promptly asked, "Who's dead?"

A male voice from the other end responded, "What?"

"Did somebody die?" She could hear her words slurring together, but couldn't make herself care.

"No."

"Did someone get hurt?" It had to be something. Why else would whoever it was be calling so damn often?

"No."

She sighed loudly, contemplated smashing the phone then and there, and instead shouted, "Then why the hell do you keep calling me?"

"You really do get wasted," he said dryly, but he still sounded concerned somewhere under it all. The concern was familiar, somehow, and so was the timbre. She spent a moment pushing through the whiskey clouds in her mind to find who the voice belonged to.

"Goddamn it, Jem, you know better than to call." It came out even louder than she had intended, somehow.

She and her brother had their own ritual every November first, only broken while he was in Europe for the war. She stayed home all day, first from school, then in later years from work, and he instructed her by phone on how to nurse her hangover. His call was the first she would pick up after that evening, and in exchange, he had always left her alone the night before. Instead of acknowledging his break in tradition, however, Jem asked, "How much have you drank?"

"About half a bottle of whiskey."

"Jesus Christ. And that's why I'm calling." Jem sounded far too weighed down for Scout's taste. The very sound of his voice made her see spots. Jesus, would she need even more whiskey to be able to tolerate this conversation? For the moment, though, she left the whiskey on her counter and lit up another cigarette instead.

"What? I only get this drunk once a year. It's not going to kill me."

He sighed. "Are you going to remember any of this tomorrow?"

"Somehow I always do." It amazed her that she wasn't even lying. Somehow, the yearly flood of whiskey did nothing to destroy her memory. Unfortunately.

"Well, then, this is why I'm calling. Because I worry about you and how you're coping." He was so serious, so practical it made her laugh out loud.

"You sound like Alexandra. Did she put you up to this?"

"Jesus Christ, no, Scout. She doesn't understand this, because of the things she doesn't know. But I know them and that's what scares me. It's been a decade and you're still struggling." His words were a heavy blanket. She knew she was too intoxicated to easily understand his level of conversation, but she didn't care. She'd decipher what he was saying one way or another, regardless of how much she'd drank.

"Easy for you to say. You got off with only a broken arm, and grew up to become Maycomb's sweetheart."

"But it's the truth. I only ever I see you bitter and unhappy."

She sighed, and once again considered smashing the phone. Wasn't it obvious? "That's because you only ever see me in Maycomb. I try to avoid that shithole as much as I can."

"It's not like it's only in public, though. Even when we're alone in the house, you're miserable and on edge."

Those stupid spots, threatening to swallow up everything until she couldn't see anymore. She thought by now she could handle a little more whiskey. And Jem was only adding to it by refusing to see the obvious. "That's because it's fucking Maycomb."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"Gee, I don't know." Her words were coming out loud again, but she didn't care. "Maybe I can't stand being in a town where all anyone thinks when they look at me is that I got fucked as an eight-year-old. Maybe I get tired of a town where it feels like everything is trying to remind me, and I have enough trouble with memories as it is."

"Do you really think that?" He sounded… shocked. Like he was the one who had drank until he was dumb and not her. She knew she didn't talk to him as much as she should, but had he really never noticed how Maycomb's perception of her was stuck in the past?

"You know I'm right, Jem. I'd tell you just the same thing when I was sober."

"I suppose you are." He sounded tired now. "Maycomb isn't very understanding of complicated situations. And you're complicated."

She couldn't help but sigh at that. "I know."

Jem stayed silent for a moment before responding. "You know I can't get away from Maycomb."

"You could at least try. Meet me when I'm in Nashville, at least."

"It's not like you won't be coming home, anyway. Can't you try to enjoy Maycomb? Show them you're not the sad nine-year-old you were once?" He was almost pleading. It was sending her head reeling again.

"I can't. Not there." She thought a moment, then slammed down the phone. She knew she shouldn't hang up on Jem like that, but he was the one who had called her on October 31. He was lucky she'd listened to him at all, even as he defended Maycomb. She'd tried to be happy there, she really had. But too many places there brought up memories, and even if she avoided them, the people around her were triggers, too.

Her head spun once again, and then she was hit with a wave of nausea. Did she have to call it a night already? She hadn't even gotten through all her cigarettes yet. But there were the spots, encroaching further on her vision, and the wobbling of the ground below her feet and she knew that she had gotten to her limit.

The phone rang again, splitting her head wide open and nearly knocking her to the ground. But she thought she should keep with tradition, if she was about to head to bed, and so she picked it up anyway. "Who is it?"

"Jack Finch." And damn it, it was. Her uncle's voice never failed to feel like home, no matter how drunk and resentful she'd gotten.

"Do me a favor, will you? Get Jem to visit you up in Nashville. I don't want to go to Maycomb again."

"I'll try. Now, let me guess: fuck off?" They both started laughing, and the world started spinning again along with it.

"Yes," she agreed, then hung up the phone and made her way into her bed, falling asleep without even bothering to get under the covers.

The next morning, as always, Jem reminded her to drink enough water, get more sleep, and if she was really feeling it, to take another swig or two of whiskey to dull the pounding of her head. And then, she asked again, "Can we visit in Nashville instead of Maycomb?"

"Only if you'll give Maycomb another chance first. Try to be who you are in New York there, just once."

She didn't want to—she knew it would only end in memories, misery and failure—but for Jem... "Ok. I'll try."

And sure enough, she did hold up her end of the deal on her next trip into Maycomb, even though by then she was already swallowed alive in both memories and misery. That had been her last phone call with Jem, and she was down just two weeks later for his funeral, still struggling to believe she'd never see him again.


	2. Maycomb Junction

**I feel the need to preface this by saying that I thought it'd be redundant to properly introduce Henry Clinton. It's all the same as in** _ **Watchman**_ **—lived across the street, friends with Jem, chosen by Atticus to take over the practice once Jem died, always was attracted to Scout. So for the most part, I stuck purely to his actions within the chapter.**

She woke up at midnight in a cold sweat, clinging to her slacks. Why had she chosen to take a sleeper train back to Maycomb that year? She should have known it'd bring back memories. Almost everything did. And sure enough, there they were, emerging the second she fell asleep, leaving her breathless.

 _She woke up, and all she could feel, all she could think about was the burning, aching, biting pain like she'd never felt, starting at her navel and consuming everything down to her thighs. All she could see was red, all she could think about was the stabbing in her pelvis, the throbbing between her legs. She didn't even notice she was screaming until she heard Atticus' voice: "Shh, Scout, everything will be alright. We're almost at the hospital in Mobile." Until he said it, she'd been too focused on her pain to even sense the moving of the car beneath her._

 _She wanted to speak, to ask what had happened and how close they were, but it took all her energy just to silence her screams, and then they were replaced by tears streaming down her face. "Open your mouth," her father commanded, and when she did, she felt a pill drop on her tongue. "Swallow," he said, and she obeyed._

" _Wh- wh-" She tried to ask what it was, but she couldn't force the words out._

" _I called Dr. Reynolds first. He said you'd have to go to the hospital, your injuries are beyond what he's capable of fixing. He gave me that pill in case you woke up."_

 _She managed to nod, though she couldn't focus enough to know if he saw it. Her injuries? What exactly had happened? She fought through the pain to look down at her body, and she saw her dress, the skirt stained with blood. She couldn't help but scream again._

She'd woken up there, thankfully, though she knew by heart what would happen next. Atticus would try to calm her, but after only another moment she'd remember what had happened and find herself screaming again before, thankfully, the pill kicked in and the world grew fuzzy, warm, and quiet, leaving her far away from everything, especially pain. The feeling of sedatives, so familiar to her now, had been such a strange novelty that first time.

Those pills had returned when upon coming home from the hospital and attempting to resume her former life, the memories constantly returned to plague her. Her third grade teacher had been given a bottle to keep in her desk drawer, and so had every teacher of hers even into high school. Atticus kept a bottle in the pocket of his jacket, Calpurnia in her apron. Even then, when it'd been years since she'd relied on them with any regularity, Scout kept a bottle in her purse at Atticus' insistence. It couldn't hurt to use them then, just a half of a tablet to ward away the memories so she could sleep in peace. But no, she'd be using them enough once she got to Maycomb, and she'd knew better than to rely on them too much.

Because of that, she knew the few hours of sleep she'd gotten before waking were surely the only ones she'd be able to get. Now not only was she moving, but it was night. She had a harder time fighting them off at night.

She turned on the lights in her sleeper compartment and pulled out a worn paperback from her bag, but despite her efforts, her eyes were growing heavy. She checked the time on her watch, the one Atticus had given her when she was fourteen, and discovered that it was only 11 PM. No wonder her eyes refused to stay open. She had no choice then, except the pills. So she swallowed one dry and allowed sleep to take her.

When she woke, it was nearly 10 AM. She'd been out for eleven hours straight, but she wasn't surprised—it was the pills. They made her sleep far too soundly. She supposed she should have broken it in half, but it wasn't as if she had anything she needed to do on the train. She busied herself with her book again, reading in her compartment with the curtains shut. She didn't need to be able see outside and have proof that she was in the south, whether she liked it or not.

She had slept in her day clothes, and so it was 3 PM before she realized she should change. Normally she wore men's pajamas (it was too difficult to find women's pajamas that were pants), but it was a train, after all, and who knew if the locks on the doors of the compartments were any good? She felt safer sleeping in slacks and a buttoned blouse, at any rate. If worse came to worse, and the unthinkable happened to her a second time, she figured that even with the pills, she'd wake up before any man could finish unzipping her slacks and pulling them down.

She didn't tell Atticus that she thought about things like that; he worried about her enough as it was. She knew she was a knot of anxiety, a mess of loose threads no one could put back together, and he knew it too. The only things he needed to know was that she was alive, fairly happy, and nothing bad had happened. The two of them had spent years escaping their worries about each other by simply living apart. Out of sight, out of mind was their rule, and thank goodness for that—she knew if she lived in Maycomb, he'd realize she was still more broken than she let on. The longer they spent apart, the better for both of their mental states—it was bad enough that he'd be picking her up at the station.

Jem she had told before—Jem knew everything there was to know before he died. He had been the only thing that could make her enjoy a trip back home—Henry Clinton was lovely, but even he couldn't do that. But Jem she could talk to, and phone calls could never be the same. Her friends in New York were lovely, in that they didn't question why she was the way she was and their pleasant conversations and jokes gave her genuine happiness, but she kept them confined to that. Friends were for enjoyment, for distraction, for fun. She didn't tell them what it meant when she was clutching to her slacks, or that when she excused herself in the middle of a conversation to go to the bathroom, she really needed to take a pill somewhere away from prying eyes and have a few moments away from the world to calm down. Even in the most lighthearted of conversations, the memories could come, and she didn't want to crush the mood. The second she told them, they'd learn to recognise the look in her eyes, and they would never be able to enjoy themselves again without worrying about her. She didn't need to be able to talk to everyone about serious matters. Jem was enough.

Without him, she managed alright—she had spent seventeen years living with the memories, and it wasn't even worth mentioning them anymore—but she knew it'd be a miracle if she could get through Maycomb without him. The closest thing she had were a few of his old shirts, stolen while she was going through his things after the funeral. She knew it would set everyone's minds at ease if she arrived reasonably put together, in a nice blouse and slacks, but for her own sanity's sake, she ignored that and donned one of his button downs instead. If she was lucky, it'd help her through her visit.

By the time she'd dressed and washed, it was nearly Maycomb Junction. She readied her bags, and then left the train, thanking the conductor and tipping the porter.

"Scout!" she heard shouted, and when she turned her head, she was surprised to find not Atticus, but Henry Clinton waiting for her. It shouldn't have come as a surprise—he had been Atticus' extra hands for a while, now, and despite everything about her had been courting her faithfully on her visits home for a number of years (at least, what passed for courting with a woman like her)—but then again, she was always astounded that he even spoke to her. Being friends with her was a difficult enough task—most of Maycomb simply stayed out of her way—but somehow he had become enamored with her despite the way she avoided all physical contact, for fear of memories, and how she hadn't worn a skirt or dress since she was eight years old. But he was easy to talk to, didn't bring up her wounds, and didn't mind how deeply she loathed Maycomb. If any man was foolish enough to keep her around, it may as well have been him.

"Hank!" She smiled at him, and she could see him squirm in spite of himself as he resisted the urge to reach out to hug her. She had often seen how he buried his hands in his lap to keep from holding hers, the way he pressed his lips together when they were alone and the mood would be right for a kiss. He had self-control, and she was incredibly grateful, but he was still human. Perhaps one day, if they weren't surrounded by Maycomb, she would let him hold her, maybe even kiss her. But for the moment, he merely took her bags and led her to his car.

"How have you been doing up in New York?"

"Oh, you know. Not perfect, but better than I'd be doing here." She got into his passenger's seat and waited for him to continue. "How about you? Has Atticus been keeping you busy?"

"As busy as always."

She sighed. She supposed she should ask. "And how is he doing?"

"Oh, you know. His hands have still been giving him fits. He does the best he can, and when he can't, he has me. That's why I'm here. He's in no condition to drive today."

"Jesus. They could gut me like a fish at eight years old, but they can't stop his damn hands from shaking. Why do we even have doctors?" She knew she sounded ridiculous, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She hadn't even set foot in Maycomb yet, since Maycomb Junction was really in Abbott County, and already she was sounding bitter.

But Henry smiled. He was used to her bitterness. "Oh, if only you'd gone into the medical profession, Jean Louise Finch." He was the only person she wouldn't kill for calling her that. Atticus, Jem and Uncle Jack knew better, and were too used to calling her Scout anyway, and Aunt Alexandra only did it when trying to get on her nerves. Henry said it like it was a joke, a lie he was telling and somehow getting away with it, and she agreed with him. Jean Louise would have been a fine name if she'd grown up to be a proper lady, but she hadn't. His recognition of that fact made her hate it less.

A silence settled as he drove to Maycomb. Henry always seemed to know when to fill the silence, to keep the ghosts away, and when to leave her be. Then, on an impulse, she broke the silence. "Fuck Maycomb. Drive me to Mobile, instead."

"Why?" He didn't even blink at her swearing. He was far too used to her, and she knew it.

"I don't need to be here. I'll go to the airport and catch a flight back to New York."

"But what about Atticus and Alexandra?"

"They've seen me before. They'll live." After a moment, she added, "But I might not."

"You'll be fine," he said, but she heard concern slipping into his tone. "You've survived it every other time."

Instead, she told the truth. "I had Jem then."

He smiled. "You still have me. Am I that inferior?"

She knew he was joking, but did he see that she wasn't? "Jesus, Hank, you know how much you mean to me, but he was my brother. There wasn't a thing about me he didn't know. And he was the only person I could talk to about how much I hate life sometimes."

He was quiet for a moment, then asked, "Well why don't you do that with me?"

"I-" She realized didn't have an answer. Why didn't she? He liked her more than anyone else in town, he already knew all the things she swore she wouldn't tell anyone in New York, and all of Maycomb knew that if she would ever marry anyone, it would be him. She'd just told him how much she missed Jem, and he already knew how desperate she was to leave Maycomb behind forever. So why didn't she talk to him about the rest?

"Jean Louise Finch." It was the first time she'd ever heard him say it completely seriously, and she couldn't help but give him her complete attention. "Will you begin to treat me as a replacement for Jem, and if, by the end of these two weeks, you've found me to be a satisfactory partner, will you marry me?"

"Henry Clinton! What has gotten into you?" she answered, but she couldn't help but smile. She really did love him. He wasn't perfect, but he tried to know her the way no one else in Maycomb dared to. She wouldn't admit it, but she'd gladly agree to his deal.

"I love you, Scout. I thought you knew that."

"I did, but I didn't think you'd want to marry me. You deserve better. You deserve a real woman, not someone who runs around in slacks, and you deserve someone who will have your children. That's more than I can provide." It hurt her to say it, but it was the truth. She was no wife, and never would be, unlike Henry, who'd certainly be the perfect husband. Still, even if she knew better, she couldn't help but add, "But if you're still hell-bent on me, it's a deal."

He tried to hide it, but she saw a smile creeping onto his face.


	3. En route to the Finch House

**I meant to have this chapter have plot in it, instead of being basically all internal dialogue and flashback, but by the time that was over, I decided that was long enough for one chapter. They'll arrive at the Finch household next week, I promise. And I'm going to aim for a new chapter every Sunday.**

 **Also, this fic is not intended to be graphic, but I feel obligated to give a warning that this chapter will contain the most vivid details surrounding the event. Nothing graphic or in depth, but enough that I still feel it warrants a warning.**

* * *

The drive to Maycomb was long, and though Henry was good at allowing Scout her silence if she wanted it, she knew that with how happy she'd just made him, he couldn't stay quiet for long. She had, at best, fifteen minutes to understand what she'd agreed to, and prepare herself mentally to see Atticus and Aunt Alexandra again.

Understanding Henry's offer was the easy part. He'd asked her to marry her under certain conditions, and she'd agreed. After all, it wasn't as if anyone else would marry her, when she wouldn't even touch a man out of fear of the memories. But no matter how nice he was about it now, she couldn't pretend agreeing to marry him wasn't also agreeing to let him hold her, touch her, kiss her, and no matter how much she tried to avoid thinking about it, one day sleep with her. He was a kind man, and she knew he'd never force her into anything, but he deserved a wife who wasn't so damn scared of physical affection.

It really would be better for the both of them if they didn't both like each other so much. She knew he really would marry her, would do it gladly, wouldn't regret it even a little bit. He'd even let her wear slacks to the wedding, swear in the middle of the ceremony, and refuse to kiss him at the end. She knew he'd spent enough time talking to Atticus to know he'd couldn't get away with trying to control her. Atticus would have taught Henry that if he really did want to marry her, he'd have to accept how improper and messy she was. And so she was left with no good reason to stop herself from going along with it, even if that would be best for Henry. If only he wasn't so easy to talk to, so open, so friendly. She could banter with him for hours, and yet he also understood her in a way most of Maycomb couldn't be bothered to.

Atticus would understand; of course he would. He'd always understood Scout, even as she became more and more conflicted. She may have hidden a great deal of things from him—the number of pills she took, the way she constantly worried, how much she drank on Halloween night—but he understood her clearly anyway.

It was Aunt Alexandra who'd be a pain. Aunt Alexandra who had never completely given up on her despite how hopeless she was. She still called her Jean Louise, made her go to coffees and missionary circles whenever she was in town, and insisted on asking if there was anyone she'd be willing to settle down with either in Maycomb or New York. No matter what, she knew there would be a thousand things wrong with the arrangement in her eyes.

She decided that it'd be best to ask Henry, at least, to gauge how hard she'd have to fight. "Henry, how's Aunt Alexandra?"

"She's the same as she's always been," he responded.

"A bitch?" Despite how polite he tried to be, she saw him smile. "You didn't disagree."

"I did not." He only managed to control himself for a second before he completely abandoned his polite sensibilities. "It amazes me that you of all people could live with her."

She shrugged. "It was never that bad. She was more insufferable when I was younger."

"I didn't know it was possible."

"Do you not know about how she fought Atticus tooth and nail about my wearing overalls for the first eight years of my life?"

"No, I didn't. What on earth could make that woman change her mind?"

Scout sighed and answered reluctantly. "It's hard to say no to a girl in a hospital bed." Suddenly, there it was, the reason she never told any of her friends in New York about this, the reason she'd always stuck to either banter or catching up on what had happened in Maycomb all the other times she'd been with Henry. The atmosphere in the car shifted, and suddenly a pleasant conversation had given way to that familiar silence she didn't know how to fill.

"I can't even imagine how she would act."

"It's the only positive memory I have of her, in all honesty," Scout said, and then remembered the deal. "I suppose you'd like to hear it?"

"That would be nice." He smiled, adjusted his hand on the wheel. "But only if you're willing to tell it."

* * *

 _She awoke slowly, immediately surrounded by white walls and bright light. Her mind seemed foggy and frozen, and she was only able to remember a few snippets of the previous night—the woods, a pain worse than anything she'd ever felt, waking up in the car. Dazed and trying to understand where she was and what was going on, she shouted, "Atticus!"_

" _Scout?" he said, hushed, right beside her. She found his hand and grabbed it, before becoming alert enough to take another look around the room. White sheets covering her body, sinks in the corner, another empty bed on the other side of the room, covered only in sheets and supported by a thin metal frame. It had to be a hospital. Did she remember Atticus saying Mobile in the car, or was she imagining it?_

 _It was then that she noticed that her body no longer seared with pain, and the only thing left was a dull, far away ache somewhere behind her navel. Everything else was gone, replaced with a strange sleepiness in every inch of her body._

" _Scout, you had a surgery a few hours ago." His voice was the only thing that made sense in that room, sounding just like it always had, reminding her of home. "Everything's alright now. You need a few more days here to heal, but after that, you'll be able to return home."_

 _She nodded slowly, then stopped to think over what he'd said. The world was still fuzzy, dreamlike, and his sentences hadn't seemed to be more than just a collection of words. Surgery? Returning home? Why? She remembered being attacked, remembered that pain worse than anything she'd ever felt, but everything else seemed so far away. So she asked, "Atticus, what happened?"_

 _He swallowed and glanced at the door. "I'm afraid I'm not the correct person to talk to you about that. There are some things that fathers can't teach their daughters. Ordinarily, the mother would, but in our circumstances, your Aunt Alexandra will be sufficient." His face was solemn._

" _Where is she?"_

" _Outside the room," he said. "She'll be in in a moment. But I thought I'd allow you a few minutes by yourself to wake up."  
_

 _She nodded again, and continued to clutch his hand, to try and remember what had happened. She and Jem had been walking. They had heard footsteps. A man had rushed towards them. She had ran, then tripped. She had heard Jem scream, gotten up and ran towards it. And then the man was grabbing her, pushing her down, lifting up her skirt, and all she knew was that he was on top of her and she felt as if she was being stabbed, being lit on fire from the inside out until finally she lost consciousness. Just the memory of the pain was enough to clear the fog from her head, to make her hands gravitate towards her abdomen._

 _Aunt Alexandra entered, and Atticus asked Scout if she wanted him to leave. She held tighter to his hand, and shook her head. Aunt Alexandra glanced towards him, but didn't say anything, and he kept his eyes down as she talked. Her speech was a blur at first, with seemingly no relevance to Scout, an explanation of a process that started with a married couple and ended with children. But then Aunt Alexandra's voice began to falter, and the words suddenly began to matter._

" _But it doesn't have to be a married couple. It should be, of course, but it isn't always. And…" She stopped, took a breath, and set her face into the same, unchanging expression that Atticus had worn. "Sometimes, a man takes advantage of a woman, or a girl even, and does it to her without her permission. That's what rape is, what the trial was about. And Mr. Ewell decided that the best way to take revenge on Atticus was to do that to you."_

 _Scout nodded slowly and squeezed Atticus' hand tighter to keep from thinking about her words too much. She now knew had happened to cause that pain, and how close she had been to such a vile, drunken man, as close as two people could get. She would squeeze his hand even tighter, until it turned blue and fell off if she had to, to remind herself not to think about that. It had already happened, it was all over, there was no reason for her to internalize what Aunt Alexandra had said. But then, she called her name, and Scout knew she had to look up and listen again, even if all she wanted to do was forget what she'd already been told._

 _It was clear from her phrasing that Aunt Alexandra had rehearsed, but still, her voice began to crack, her breaths coming more quickly between sentences, becoming less composed every word. "He was not… gentle. And you're so young, and small, that serious damage was done. Atticus said you'd woken up in the car, but he didn't know if you'd seen or if you'd be able to remember how much you were bleeding." Scout could feel her eyes widen, her body constrict as it came back to her, her skirt soaked in blood, screaming and hoping that they would be at the hospital soon, or better yet, that moment. Aunt Alexandra must have seen it, because she paused, swallowed, and attempted to steady her voice before continuing. "To stop that quickly, and because of the other damage, the doctors decided to remove the organs involved. You'll be fine without them, but when you're older-"_

 _She stopped, and Scout could see her wipe at her eyes, notice how they'd become red. She finished in a whisper. "You won't be able to be a mother."_

 _Scout was clutching Atticus' hand even tighter, was ignoring the stinging in her eyes, was trying to pretend she hadn't understood every word Aunt Alexandra had said. It didn't matter, wouldn't matter for years. She would just keep going to school, going to church, going home every night, and it would be like nothing had happened._

 _But it wouldn't, because she knew now. She knew that at any moment, a man could push her down to the floor again, could lift up her skirt like that and she'd be back in the hospital, hurt in ways that made even Aunt Alexandra cry. In school, in town, in church… now she knew she was always vulnerable._

 _She didn't really think about the words before she said them. "I don't want to wear skirts anymore. They're not safe." It was only after she'd said it that she'd realized she was talking to Aunt Alexandra, that surely she wouldn't allow it._

 _But Aunt Alexandra just nodded. "I'll see if there's a store here in Mobile that sells slacks in your size. We can't have you going to school or church in overalls."_

 _Scout squeezed Atticus' hand again, and tried to ignore the tears she felt beginning to slide down her cheeks. It was safer, she reminded herself. It was a start._

 _Her voice still shaking, eyes still red, Aunt Alexandra said, "If you don't have any questions, I think I should leave now. You look like you need more rest."_

 _Scout didn't respond—she knew she couldn't without coming undone—and after a moment, Aunt Alexandra quietly left. It was only then that Scout put her head down and let herself cry, hoping that once she was finished, she'd be able to sleep._


	4. The Finch House

Henry Clinton had spent the entire ride in near silence, nodding along and wearing a horrified expression. It had been so long since she'd last spoken about what had happened to her that she had nearly forgotten how astounded they always were. Indeed, he was almost silent, except for a simple refrain: "I can't imagine." He couldn't imagine sitting there, learning all that at once at age eight, he couldn't imagine being Alexandra and having to explain it all, he couldn't imagine how Scout felt. Each time she merely nodded, and moved along, until the story was over. What else could she say? She could imagine, after all.

It wasn't long after she finished that they arrived at the Finch household. Somehow, even with decades of age, it looked the same as it always had. Both before everything, when she and Jem played on the street, peaked into the Radley house, and spent summers sleeping in cots on the front porch, and after, when she'd returned from Mobile, and stumbled home day after day tried to ignore the torrent of memories, the house had been a constant. She found herself staying in the passenger's seat even after Henry came around and opened the car door for her, entranced by the strange familiarity, the one thing in Maycomb she neither loved nor hated, but merely accepted. The Finches changed, no matter how imperceptibly; their house did not.

She let Henry lead her into the familiar hall. There were no changes there to comfort her, nothing new to suggest that at least one thing in Maycomb had changed. Instead, she was greeted by the sight of the same worn couches, the old, soot-stained rug, and the faded blue curtains that she'd been told her mother picked out and had hung there for the quarter-century since. Henry politely greeted Atticus, stationed in his familiar armchair, and Alexandra, sitting on the sofa, and Scout, for once, did not interject. She had no desire to be back in that house, much less make conversation with its occupants. Henry could do that for her.

But Alexandra greeted her, with her familiar tone, an appallingly feminine drawl. "Jean Louise, how wonderful to see you again!" Scout flinched at her name, but smiled cordially and even gave her a hug for good measure, despite how much physical contact set her on edge. Though she hated to admit it, because the woman was so damn irritable, and could not understand a single thing about her, Scout knew she meant well. The problem was that Alexandra had always been able to speak, gossip, and love without consequence. Someone who had the luxury of agreeing with Maycomb's expectations for her and who had been able to run its social hierarchy instead of being rejected by it could never understand how Scout lived, how she functioned. Alexandra never had to run away, to avoid things, to do anything but trust the social order that had placed men above women. Scout resented her aunt for it, but she couldn't in good conscience say she didn't envy her.

Between her and Atticus, there was a simple understanding. He'd suffered loss, been subject to rumors, worked hard for what he wanted even if no one else understood. They were, in some sense, the same person. So he knew enough to greet her simply with "Hello Scout," then stayed patiently in his seat, waiting for her to steer the conversation. But instead, Alexandra took the reigns.

"How was the train?"

"Fine." It was a lie, but of course it was; her aunt never knew the full extent of her memories, her struggles, because she had moved back to Finch's Landing not long after Scout had seemed to recover and had only seen her a few times a year since.

"Did you eat?"

"I don't think so." She knew she hadn't, but admitting that would be inviting a lecture on taking care of herself.

"And the ride here?"

"Henry was excellent company." Scout looked towards him, hoping he'd interject somehow, and save her from the horrors of conversation in Maycomb, conversation that always turned to others, to gossip, to "news." She had been Maycomb's big news in 1935, and ever since, she had no desire to learn about what others had been doing from people who hadn't even spoken to them. But instead, Henry just nodded politely and thanked her.

"I'm glad. How have you been managing in the city?" Alexandra flashed the sweet, polite smile she'd perfected over decades of missionary circles and church society meetings. Scout didn't think she'd once seen a genuine smile from her, or indeed, any genuine emotion at all, aside from when Jem died and when she was in the hospital.

At that, Scout made sure to smile in return, and actually smile, not the uncomfortable, faked thing she so often flashed at Alexandra in an attempt to be polite. "Wonderfully. Work has been lovely and I've been more social than you would believe." The first statement would be a travesty in Alexandra's eyes. She had long given up on the idea that Scout could ever be fixed, or made into a perfect woman, but still, the idea that she enjoyed working outside the home would still be unimaginable. The second was an understatement—Scout had possessed acquaintances and accomplices during her childhood and college years, but never true friends who she'd gone out of her way to speak to.

"Have you thought about moving back?" Alexandra still wore her false smile, still spoke lightly, and innocently, but the words immediately send panic through Scout's blood. Alexandra had known Scout for her entire life, and yet somehow, even as she relinquished her desires for Scout to dress properly and abandon her career, she refused to grasp that Scout would never be anything but miserable in Maycomb. Perhaps if she knew as much about Scout as Atticus, she would understand, but Scout doubted it. Alexandra simply could not live without striving to fix one thing or another about her, while Atticus had tried his best to raise his children so they did not need to be fixed. When Bob Ewell had came along and ruined it, he had simply attempted to minimize the damage and then left her be.

"No," she finally said, plain and simply. There was no point in justifying it further, and Alexandra didn't press it further.

Scout turned her attention to Atticus, since she knew that, at least, would result in pleasant conversation. "How have you been?"

"A little better. How about you?"

"A little better," she said with a smile, both of them knowing that what they really meant was that they'd been the same, but minded it less. "How's the office been?"

"The same old cases. You know. Henry's been learning well." At this, Henry muttered a polite thanks.

"Wonderful." And with that, they'd gotten through their yearly pleasantries. Another year could pass by with each being reasonably certain that the other was doing alright. The rest of her homecoming could be spent either in blessed silence, or in discussion of whatever Atticus had been reading. As she liked it.

Alexandra excused herself to go to the kitchen to prepare an early dinner, and Scout was relieved to see her go, paying no mind to the fact that her aunt believed a fine young woman would offer to help cook. It was only when Henry, who had been quietly standing by the door, looked towards her and nodded towards the kitchen that she even considered it. "What?"

"Isn't there something you thought you should tell her in private?" He smiled, that damn smile that showed he still didn't believe that their little bargain had occurred. If only he wasn't right, in realizing that she'd have to tell Aunt Alexandra about her intents to marry him sooner or later. Better to ease the blow now and say she was considering it than to come home with a ring on her finger and face her full wrath.

Scout nodded, and slipped into the kitchen, quietly asking, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Could you put a pot of water on to boil for me, please, and then start chopping some carrots?" Scout didn't respond, only obeyed, silently following her aunt's instructions and knowing that she couldn't immediately start talking, or Alexandra would know that it was the only reason she'd entered the kitchen in the first place.

She tried not to notice how damn pleased with herself Alexandra seemed as she prepared potatoes, and seasoned chicken. How was she so happy in life when all she did was keep house and cook, spending her whole life engaged in nothing but domestic pursuits? Meanwhile, Scout felt that her soul was been eaten away by resigning herself to the kitchen, whatever independence she enjoyed being destroyed with each slice of her knife. She put the pot on, then cut one, two, three carrots before she was sure she'd be safe to talk.

"Aunt Alexandra?"

"Yes, Jean?"

"I'm sure you think it's about time I left New York and settled down."

"In my opinion, you should never have gone up there in the first place. And by twenty-six… there's no need to be settled quite yet, but you should be considering it at least."

Scout frowned. How to say it in a way that wouldn't immediately catch Alexandra's eye, wouldn't invite an attack from one angle or another. "Well, it's just that Henry and I have been dating for a while now, and we were thinking that it was about time we considered getting married."

"Jean Louise-" Already her voice was harsh, overbearing. It was the lecture Scout could have seen coming a mile away, and still, it stung like hell. She couldn't do it, not then, not without Jem. She had already exposed herself to Henry, shared with him the worst memory of her life. She didn't need Alexandra stripping her bare too, and for the millionth time, making it seem like it was her fault Henry was the only man who could ever love her for who she is, her fault that she'd spent her whole childhood and adolescence too busy trying to survive despite memories and gossip to learn to act like a proper Finch.

Scout let her voice be harsh, biting. "We'll be formally engaged by the time I'm back in New York whether you like it or not. Now I'm going to the bathroom." She stormed through the door, stopped in the living room to grab her purse, ignoring the look Henry gave her, entered the bathroom, and locked the door. She hated to walk out on an argument, but she knew there was only one way she'd be able to survive talking to the bitch.

She fiddled with the damn pill bottle until it finally opened, then swallowed one whole. The pills were for inescapable memories, and that was a rule— too many and she'd be hooked to sedatives and even more of a wreck than she was already. But if she was going to be able to survive this fucking conversation, she needed something, and she didn't carry whiskey with her. Besides, with the pills, she knew within five minutes, she'd find herself caring a whole lot less about everything Alexandra said, and the same couldn't be said if she'd taken a shot. Even on an empty stomach, her tolerance was too high for that.

She made her way back to the kitchen slowly, setting her purse back down on the couch along the way. There, she resumed chopping, waiting for the lecture to commence.

"Jean Louise, you have to think about this carefully. Henry's a perfectly fine boy, sure, but his father ran off on him when he was young, and Finches simply don't marry that sort of folk. He's done very well for himself despite his background, in no small part because of your father's generosity towards him, but the fact remains, he's still got that in his blood. The Clintons have a drinking streak in their family, too, and that's the last thing you want to pass down to your children. They have a tendency towards broken marriages, as you can see from his parents, and you most certainly do not want that. Haven't you seen how he'll eat with his hands and lick his fingers, play with the buttons on his shirts when he thinks no one is looking, pick at his nose and his eyes? He's a fine boy, and he means well, but he simply cannot help it. He's trash through and through, and-"

Scout already hadn't been fully listening to her aunt, but as she finished her speech, the words began to slip away from her grasp, and she had to focus hard to hear them. Instead, the world was light, fuzzy, far away, and so she didn't feel the slightest bit guilty for interrupting her. How could she when she had already formulated the proper response, even if it was one she wouldn't dare say sober?

"Aunty, I have just one question: if I married Henry, would that then make me trash?"

She strained to hear and understand Alexandra's response. "It most certainly would."

She inhaled, attempted to mimic Atticus' courtroom speeches. "Well then, Aunt Alexandra, I'd say that raises the question: what part of the marriage is responsible for the transfer of trashiness in the first place? It couldn't be the legal aspect or the religious aspect, since it isn't something that either God or the law seem terribly concerned about." She could vaguely see Alexandra's face, staring at her disapprovingly, shaking her head. "It couldn't be the love, either, or I'd be trash already and it wouldn't matter if I married him. So that leaves just one thing, and well, by that measure, I'd say Bob Ewell made me trash way back in 1935 and I have nothing to worry about."

Now she could hear Alexandra clearly, even if she could not bring herself to care. "Jean Louise Finch, how dare you take your tragedy and use it so flippantly! As if the entire town isn't whispering about how you never recovered as it is…"

Scout laid down her knife, left the carrots, and exited the kitchen. She'd found her confidence and said her words. There was no point in remaining with the self-righteous, societal-minded bitch longer than she had to. Instead, she pulled the first one of Atticus' books she saw off his shelf, sat on the sofa, and began to read, waiting for the high of the sedative to wear off. Thank God, it never took long.


	5. Henry's Car

Henry had said goodbye to Scout and left at some point in the afternoon, saying he'd be back at 7:30 as usual. She had responded without processing it. She was still far, far away from Maycomb and everyone in it, and stayed that way into the afternoon. She had eaten silently when it was time, ignoring Alexandra's glares across the table, and then returned to her novel, not looking up until it was 7:15 and Atticus was calling her name, saying that she'd better hurry up and get ready unless she wanted to go out in Jem's shirt.

She cursed the pills and the way they seemed to suck all of her energy out of her. Sure, they were called sedatives for a reason, but did they really have to make her so damn out of it? She proceeded to throw on slacks and a blouse, splash water on her face and run a brush through her hair, and then, right on time, the doorbell rang. As she entered the front room, Henry was standing in the doorway, the same as always: presentably dressed, smiling politely at Atticus, and stealing glances at her when he thought no one was looking. It wasn't that she didn't deserve him—she didn't think there was any girl who could deserve a man who tried so hard to please her—it was that he didn't deserve her, for she was also true to form: somewhat presentable, but still late, dressed in slacks and hardly cheerful. And still, he was be outside ringing her doorbell every Saturday evening she was home and had been for years. That was worth knowing she wouldn't be able to look her aunt in the eye for the rest of the week.

She wished Atticus a quick good night, and then turned to Henry, and it was only then that it completely hit her. She would marry him, and they'd spent the rest of their lives together. She'd guilted Alexandra so she couldn't possibly say no, and Atticus obviously approved, so what else was there too it? For so many years, she'd been unable to imagine marriage, and had feared the idea of being under the rule of a man. She had enough evidence of the power men could wield over her; she didn't need it reinforced legally. But living under Henry's judgement and obeying his every whim didn't scare her, like the idea of any other husband did. No matter what, she had to admit she trusted him more than she trusted herself. And if she trusted him with decision making, with heading a two person household, that was really all there was to it. That was all she really needed to do to be a wife.

She looked at him again, at the way his eyes never left her face and his smile was almost carefree in its happiness. She envied how he was able to be the image of a perfect man, his shirts always carefully pressed and tucked in, his shoes shining, the furthest thing from her imaginable. And yet she knew as soon as he spoke, he'd be able to say exactly what she wanted, to make her laugh when she needed it and to understand everything she said and didn't say. She loved him, and as the feeling rushed over her, she could no longer find her fear and instead reached out to grab his hand.

As she slid her fingers to feel his and admired the warmth that now passed between their palms, he looked over at her, unable to hide his wide-eyed look of giddy disbelief. She answered the question he hadn't yet asked the only way she could. "I love you, Henry Clinton. And God damn it, I intend to marry you."

He nodded, the only answer she needed, and held her hand tightly as they walked to his car. As soon as they were both in their seats, he extended his arm once more and they were touching again. Scout could feel every callous on his fingers, made by hours spent writing longhand, and every line across his palm. She couldn't help but spent minutes thinking about nothing but how their fingers intertwined, becoming increasingly amazed at how her fear had evaporated. There she was, touching him, and she was fine. Completely fine.

Softly, barely breaking their silence, Henry asked, "Did it go over alright with Alexandra?"

She shook her head and the high she had received from his touch began to fade. "Of course not. But at least I sort of won."

"Sort of?"

She sighed. "Aunt Alexandra and I have a yearly holiday: the day Bob Ewell gets dragged into things. I hate it, she hates it, but it's the only thing that forces her to leave me alone. But being left alone isn't really winning."

"How long did it take for you to have to…" He paused, and she knew he didn't want to say it. It didn't matter how comfortable she was with her facts; they'd never stop being awkward for everyone else.

"I knew I'd have to resort to it as soon as I started the conversation. It's the one thing I know I can't get her to budge on. So I let her rant about marrying trash for a little while, and then I asked why it mattered if I married trash when I'd already slept with it. I didn't like it, but at least then I could walk out knowing she'd never want to have that argument again." She sighed. "It is what it is."

"I knew she wouldn't approve. It doesn't matter. She'll have to give up and come around eventually." Scout nodded, and squeezed his hand. He understood so easily. Whether she swore and fell apart or she remained composed, whether she acknowledged her past or she didn't—everything was as intuitive to him as it was to her.

The car came to a stop at the Maycomb Hotel, and she found herself turning to Henry. "I'm not hungry."

"You can't drink on an empty stomach."

"I don't want to drink, either. I've spent enough of today high."

"What?" He immediately sat up straight and spun so that his entire body was facing her. He was leaning towards her, his gaze probing her for any answer that could be hidden in her face, and she immediately realized it.

"Jesus Christ. You don't know." She knew she should remain calm and kind. It wasn't his fault she kept it as hidden as she could. But even, still, it came as a shock, and she couldn't keep that out of her voice. "How the hell have you spent this much time around me without knowing about the fucking pills?"

"Pills?" His eyes still flashed with concern. It was amazing, after all that time, that he still had the energy to worry about her.

She sighed. "It's a long story. You'll have to sit through it whether you like it or not." Scout swore that for a second, she saw Henry begin to smile, before he caught himself and put on a somber expression.

* * *

 _Scout had quickly picked up on how school had changed after Halloween, immediately noticing the way Miss Gates now smiled too widely at her and tolerated too much. Pointed questions and verbal fights with classmates that would have normally resulted in harsh punishments were often not addressed at all. And Miss Gates had never once shown any sign of punishing her for not wearing dresses._

 _Atticus had made one thing very clear: whether they liked it or not, it was unavoidable that the entire town would know what happened. He had left it up to Alexandra to spread the news through Maycomb's circles of gossip delicately, to handle it with care. He had told Scout that they would know that she had been out of school, that he had cancelled all of his meetings with clients and stayed home from the office for days. It was better for them to know the truth than to make up lies, and he'd made sure there was no doubt in her mind that even Maycomb's biggest gossips would take pity._

 _It was clear her classmates had been given some form of explanation from the way they stared at her as she entered the classroom. They smiled, but avoided conversation unless she started it; they had no problems with her joining schoolyard games but would never invite her to do so. But after a few days, they seemed to have understood that she was trying to proceed as if nothing had happened and resumed their normal behavior._

 _So she had been shouting at Cecil Jacobs over something or other as she left the school for lunch when it happened, just a sharp pinprick of pain in her thigh. But it expanded throughout her lower body in an instant, until once again, everything from her navel down was not only stinging, but burning, aching, that same pain that left her unable to think and barely able to breathe. She was on the ground, now, and the schoolyard was long gone—it was dark and she was in the woods, her back pressed against a layer of dead leaves, and there was a man on top of her who smelled of whiskey. She could hear her own screams echoing in her ears once again, and found herself once again praying that it would stop, that somehow it would no longer feel as if she was being torn in two. Then, finally, the world disappeared entirely._

 _She woke up to every child in Maycomb who went home for lunch standing over her and staring at her, and Cecil Jacobs asking, "What on earth made you scream like that over a bee sting?" Unable to answer, she ran all the way home on shaking legs, and clung tightly to Atticus as soon as she arrived._

 _It was through tears that she managed to explain: "They said a bee stung me, but all of a sudden, I was back in the woods on Halloween." Atticus nodded and promised to call Dr. Reynolds, before asking if she was able to return to school. She slowly nodded, and so the day carried on as normal._

 _In the evening, as Dr. Reynolds asked what had happened, she watched his face carefully, and listened from across the room as he told Atticus the truth: there was nothing wrong with her, no way to know why all of a sudden she was trapped inside a memory. But the answer she was supposed to get was merely watching Dr. Reynolds hand Atticus two bottles of pills, telling her that Atticus would keep one and Miss Gates would have the other. If anything happened again, one pill would take care of it. And from then on, even though she knew it was hardly a perfect remedy, she didn't question it. The memories quickly became a fact of her life, and she'd take whatever she could do survive them._

* * *

She inhaled and exhaled, clearing her mind. The rest, he could infer—there was no reason to tell him that he had used them for other reasons that day, or how frequently she would take ones before bed, just in case. Instead, she asked, "Isn't there anything else to do in Maycomb besides eating and drinking?"

At first, he shook his head, but a moment later he took her arm again and said, "I think I know something that might work." His smile was strong enough that she could almost ignore that he'd grabbed her wrist and not her hand. Still, she couldn't help but notice how his palm was pressing into the leather band of her watch and causing it to press against the skin underneath. He doesn't know better, she reminded herself. But still, she took her arm back, and held onto her wrist for the rest of the drive. Henry still couldn't wipe that damn smile off his face.


	6. The House with Bright Red Shutters

_**Honestly, this is my favorite chapter I've written so far**_ — _ **and I just realized I never uploaded it. So please read it now, but also I'm so sorry for somehow uploading the document for chapter 3 instead when I posted this.**_

Scout watched gratefully as Henry put more and more streets in between the two of them and the places in town that had never approved of her—the hotel, the churches, the banks, and the houses that belonged to respectable residents. Instead, she found that she was being taken through the back streets filled with the houses of Maycomb's poor, shacks crammed three to a block and often left in disrepair. It was across from one of them that Henry pulled over his car. "Here it is."

"What?"

Henry paused for a moment before answering. "You're not the only one with childhood stories. This is the house I grew up in. The one with the bright red shutters." His voice trailed off, as if in thought, but after a moment, he continued, "I know it's hardly what you grew up in, but it was enough for my mom and me. She was more concerned with my getting a proper schooling than having a perfect house."

Scout looked up at him and at the way his eyes lingered on the now overgrown yard, the rotting siding. No wonder he understood her so well. His mother had died when he was still so young, of course, but even before, he had lived in a section of town one hardly admitted to being from. Though Scout may never have actually heard it in her childhood, she knew there could be no way Alexandra was the only one who wouldn't let him forget that he grew up in the part of town reserved for poor trash. Just like her, he couldn't escape the whispers. What could she say to that?

"I understand completely," she managed to respond, before she also lost herself in the details of the house. A tire swing still hung from a small tree in the corner of the lot, and a rocking chair was left to rot on the porch. Though the small yard was overgrown, the plants were those that would have once been found in a garden, unculled patches of flowers and vegetables that had taken over the lawn. Despite its current state of disarray, it was clear that at one point, the house had been a home.

"Someone lived here for a little while after my mother died, but it's been abandoned ever since." His voice was even heavier than it had been when she'd heard him speak of his mother's death, or when she'd told him stories of her own tragedy. This house had held the first fourteen years of his life, and yet it had been left to the mercy of nature for years. And as he shook his head, and muttered, "It's a damn shame," she could see that no matter how well he tried to hide it, it was killing him.

Suddenly, Scout's desire to see inside his life mingled with an urge to help him out of his pain however she could and she asked, "If it's abandoned, could we look a little closer?"

There was a sense of astonishment as he met her eyes. "The inside would be empty. But perhaps we could sit on the steps." Somehow, even after all the attention Henry had lavished on Scout and the stories of her trauma, he seemed shocked that she would care about his life at all.

"I'd like that," she said, smiling.

As the two of them walked over together in silence, Scout felt as though she was entering into his memory. The setting was so well preserved in an exhibit of family life, only disturbed by years of wind and weather, as if there had been no second family at all. She could almost see Cara Clinton bent over the plants in the garden, picking radishes and pulling weeds as an eight-year-old Henry swung back and forth on the tire swing. From the way Henry stared at the different corners of the yard, she knew he was also lost in memory, watching as figures from years ago filled the yard.

"I wish I had this," Scout said, quietly.

"Weren't you and Jem always running through the neighborhood, causing all kinds of trouble? Didn't you used to read with Atticus every day? It's not as if you didn't have a home."

She closed her eyes for a moment. He was right, and yet he was so wrong. "Jem and I always played in the woods, and Atticus and I read at night. After Halloween, the night and the woods weren't safe anymore. I slept with a lamp on in my room from when I was eight until I was twelve, simply believing the light would chase the memories away, even though over time, more and more often I remembered the hospital or the times when I'd been overtaken by memories at school and not the night itself. It was light in those memories, but it didn't matter. The night hadn't been safe for years. And I'm still afraid to set foot in the woods, just out of fear of what could happen next time and what it could stir up." She met his eyes. "Your childhood is still here. I can't even bear to look at mine."

"'Tis better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all,'" Henry recited softly. "You still had a home to love once, even if you can't love it anymore."

"Nashville's more my home than Maycomb. Streets like this always remind me of it. The houses are dense, but it's still not a city like New York, packed with businessmen and high rises. It's a place where people live and work. People grow up there, but people also live there after they're grown. I wanted a place that could be that for me. And Nashville sort of was."

"After only four years?" Another thing he didn't know. Henry had been off in the war when she had finally lost her ability to survive in Maycomb and moved in with her uncle. She had been fourteen. It was in Nashville that she finished high school, but Henry had always been home from the war or from college at the same times she was—Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and a few weeks every summer—so he'd never learned that she didn't live in Maycomb anymore. He only knew that after she'd graduated, she'd attended a girl's college there.

"Eight," she corrected. "When I was fourteen, I gave up on Maycomb and Uncle Jack let me live with him. He didn't change much to accommodate me. He still lived like a bachelor. But we lived that way together. We'd start each morning with only a cup of coffee before rushing off to work and school, and spend the evenings reading in silence. We left the house once a week for groceries, and every Sunday, we'd debate whether to go to church or back to bed. It was simple, but I'd give anything to have it back."

"It was like that with my mom and I," Henry said. "We didn't have money to do more than spend all our time at home, with her gardening and me running around the yard, but it was enough. And no matter what, she made sure that I'd wake up to a plate of eggs or a bowl of oatmeal, and that I'd only go to bed after a full meal, eaten together as we talked through our days. There wasn't much, but if I could only eat in our kitchen one more time, or spent one more evening sitting on the couch, listening to the radio…"

"I'd be happy for the first time in years," Scout finished, meeting his eyes. She squeezed his hand tightly, hoping that it could convey everything words could not. How she could already see Henry and her living in some small house or apartment, spending the evenings in quiet pursuits, rarely feeling the need to talk, but whenever they did, having the sort of conversations she wasn't free to have with anyone else. How deeply she wanted to run away with him to Nashville and never return, to elope and buy a little apartment like Uncle Jack's, to only leave to wander the familiar streets and visit the same handful of stores she always had. She found herself leaning against him in the silence, just noticing how they were together, knowing that they were thinking the same things in different ways.

This was why she trusted him to marry her—he understood. He had had a simple, happy life, and endured a tragedy he was much too young for. That the order was reversed from her, that his tragedy ended his peaceful life instead of eventually starting it, was unimportant. They both knew how it felt to be on the outskirts of Maycomb, to be happy without anyone else, to survive while feeling deeply alone, and so one day, they would lead a quiet life together. For the moment, though, they simply sat on the worn, concrete steps, entranced by visions of their pasts and futures.

"I can take you home if you like," Henry said quietly, as if he was scared to break their silence.

"I don't want to leave. I want to stay here, in this moment with you, for all eternity." Scout said. "And then, when all eternity is over, I want to stay here a little longer." She reached over and grabbed his hand again.


	7. Maycomb County Courthouse

_**So this chapter was a bit weird to write because I was not around in the 1950s. That hasn't been a huge problem up to this point because the whole major conflict about racism in the original isn't very relevant to this AU because GSAW's whole plot is about Jean/Scout becoming disillusioned mostly because of that, and in this she's already really disillusioned. That said, I never intended to leave it out completely, so here we are. Because obviously Harper Lee knew a lot more about the atmosphere in the south at the time than I do, most of the actual racism in this scene is taken directly from GSAW, but I feel the need to say I modified things a fair amount because the n-word appeared a lot in the original courthouse scene and I simply don't feel comfortable including that in my own writing even though I know that comes at the expense of historical accuracy. So basically, I tried my best, but forgive me for anything that's not great.**_

* * *

Sundays in Maycomb were never a pleasant experience for Scout. Every time she was back in the old Methodist church, she could feel the eyes on her, dozens of people catching the only glimpse of her they would before she was back in New York again, no doubt wondering why she still hadn't learned to wear dresses. She knew that in Alexandra's gossip circle before Sunday school, her aunt had been forced to take up her annual fight on Scout's behalf, repeating the same refrains Maycomb's women had whispered for years to justify her odd behavior. _It's not her fault. She could have been a fine lady. But her mother died when she was two, and then with what happened when she was eight… it's no wonder she turned out like she did._

Scout had no desire to spend a morning in the old Methodist church, unable to focus on the sermon because the people staring in the pews reminded her too much of the children that had watched her in class while she was hyperventilating and hoping her teacher would come over with the pill bottle before it was too late. No matter how hard she tried to ignore the eyes, to prevent the memories from getting through, she always found herself grasping onto her trousers in an attempt to keep grounded and focusing on her breathing. She could think about nothing except how she couldn't think about the past. Always, she kept one hand on her purse, knowing at any moment she could run to the bathroom and stop having to fight for control of her consciousness. But it would feel wrong to be sedated at church, to have the pills in control of her soul in the time she was supposed to have it focused on God. Despite how little piety she felt while suffering through the services, it was still more reverent than pretending to be paying attention when really her mind was far, far away.

Upon returning home, Alexandra became insufferable, asking how Henry was and what they did the previous night through her plastered on company smile. Scout attempted to answer, but she had no desire to lie when she had already spent an entire Sunday morning without a thought about God, and she didn't dare tell Alexandra the truth about where they had gone. Quickly, Alexandra launched into a torrent of questions about her job, her friends in New York, and what she did in her free time, all of which Scout found she could only answer in one or two words before she came perilously close to hitting on something Alexandra would take issue with. Meanwhile, Atticus, usually her lifeline in such discussions, retreated to his study as soon as lunch was over.

So by two, Scout was unable to stand the Finch house any longer and told her aunt that she was going for a walk. Alexandra muttered some form of disapproval, but ultimately, she had no real reason to fight it. Scout was still dressed in her Sunday best, so there would be no problems if she ran into someone.

She wandered down the old Maycomb streets, trying to keep her eyes away from the familiar store marquees, each one able to trigger a different memory: the time she'd fainted while watching a screening at the cinema, the time she'd been confronted in the Jitney Jungle by someone new to Maycomb and asked what exactly she meant by dressing like a boy, the times she'd found herself rushing back to the pharmacy for a refill when her pills ran out sooner than she expected. Instead, she kept her eyes glued on streets and parking lots, simple things that could do her no harm.

But no, there was nothing in Maycomb that wasn't perilous in one way or another, nothing that couldn't send her spiralling quickly, left shaky and directionless. Sure enough, she found herself stumbling upon a parking lot that was anything but benign—that of the courthouse. Despite it being an early Sunday afternoon, a time without any legal proceedings or any real reason for anyone to be at the courthouse, rows of cars filled the parking lot. Before she knew it, her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she was pushing through the front door of the courthouse and pressing her ear against the courtroom door.

She caught only passing words and phrases, each a familiar knife aimed at anyone unlucky enough to have skin darker than a sheet of paper: "Go back to Africa… Apes… kinky wooly heads… they'll marry our daughters… they'll take over our towns… Jesus died for good, white Christians." The daggers flew quickly, spit out with incredible force. She was used to Maycomb's prejudices, to its gossip, and to its petty hatred of anyone who wasn't a wise white gentlemen, a subservient white mother, or a sweet white virgin, but she could never remember hearing words with this much bite behind them. Jesus, she'd seen enough shit being thrown at negroes in 1935—how was it worse and not better 17 years later?

1935—The last time she'd been in the courthouse was 1935, when she'd snuck up to the negro balcony to watch Atticus in the toughest case of his life, with no idea of how it'd come back to haunt her in a few short months. She'd quickly decided never to enter it again, that nothing good could come of it. If she needed Atticus that badly she'd make Jem get him or wait on the courthouse steps until he finally left. It was never something she'd given much thought, just one of a dozen private vows she'd made after October 31st. Never wear dresses. Never go into the woods. Never go out at night unless you can't avoid it. Some she'd broken within years, but most she still kept and wouldn't dream of breaking. Yet for the first time in 17 years, she was running up the steps to the negro balcony to discover what on earth was making them take aim at people who'd never done anything to them when they'd done it often enough in the past.

It was a Sunday, for God's sakes, a fucking Sunday. And yet as she leaned over the railing, she could see them putting words in God's mouth, claiming he'd done things only they did: kept races apart for a reason, fitted negroes with tiny brains, made white men masters of all. Scout had at least known she'd never be accepted Maycomb, had been able to leave it behind before she was even 18—the NAACP gave negroes more hope every day, and they couldn't leave because barely had enough money to survive where they already were. The Supreme Court was in Washington doing its damnest to try and keep the south from being the outdated, unaccepting mess that she'd left behind for New York and never looked back, and yet what did she see below her? A crowd of Southern racists.

Jesus, those courtroom benches had to be holding every man in Maycomb county, nodding along as some strange man in a suit and tie grew gradually more red-faced from his tirade, saying the North would ruin their way of life (why the hell did they think it was worth preserving?) just because they believed that negroes deserved to eat in their restaurants, learn in their schools, and attend their churches. Both Maycomb's trash and upper crust sat silently, without a word of protest, their presence making it clear that they believed themselves to be superior in every way. They acted as if it was the negroes' fault that they were somehow lesser in their eyes. At least Scout had 8 years of Maycomb's respect before it was taken from her because of something she'd had no control over—those poor negroes had never had any respect, would never have it no matter what the US government said or did, not as long as for some strange reason, all the white men in Maycomb county felt the need to congregate on a Sunday to listen to someone agree that they were superior and always had been.

Scout knew there was no ending it, no saving the poor negroes from this abuse, but she could not look away. Even as she heard the clock chime 2:30, she stayed, clinging to the railing and watching desperately. The pastors who she thought were at least slightly decent since they'd always been able to look her in the eye, the store clerks who had always forced smiles, the school teachers who had been willing to hide bottles of pills in their desks; every last one seemed willing to sit there for hours, and it was enough to make her certain that there was nothing worth returning to in Maycomb, besides her father and Henry-

Henry. That man, sitting at the front table. He had almost seemed like him. His eyes were so similar. She hadn't even noticed it then, hadn't fully processed the resemblance in their faces, because there was no way it could be—there was no way it could be—she would look at him again, and it wouldn't be—

Henry. Seated at the front table, nodding along. The same man who'd asked to hear her stories. The same man who'd been called trash a thousand times behind his back. The same man who would give anything to marry her even though she wasn't a sweet southern virgin and didn't even act like a woman. And now he was sitting there, attesting to these horrible beliefs...

She felt her hands slip off the railing, her feet fall out from under her. Her purse. She needed her purse. She needed her pills—but no. They were home, at the house. Henry was hateful, was just like the rest of Maycomb, would tell everyone all her secret memories without a second thought, and she didn't even have the pills to calm her down. It didn't matter that this wasn't a memory, that this was real… surely the pills could make it disappear just as easily, could make her forget she'd seen it at all, if only they were fucking there.

Because maybe it wasn't like Uncle Jack had said, that he'd heard of people who after certain things happened to them also couldn't escape the memories, mostly soldiers, but other people too. Maybe she was actually crazy, she had always been crazy, it had just taken Halloween to make it manifest itself through the memories. Maybe at 26 years old she had finally completely lost it and was hallucinating the whole thing. After all, surely Henry Clinton, her fucking fiance, wasn't sitting in front of a room full of men who'd gathered to discuss how terrible negroes were. Henry revered Atticus, loved her, had been best friends with Jem. Surely he wouldn't associate with these people. Surely it was all made up by her deranged mind.

She found herself running back down the stairs, out of the courthouse, and all the way home without a thought about who could see her, because surely everyone had known all along that she should have been thrown in an asylum years ago. Atticus should have dropped her off in 1935 and never looked back. But instead he'd gotten her the damn pills, which had hidden her insanity until now, when she was finally breaking in the middle of fucking Maycomb. So she entered her house, headed for her room, and grabbed the pills again, because even if they were the result of a misdiagnosis, they were the only means of coping with insanity she'd been given. She swallowed two pills dry and promptly collapsed on her bed, crying, over what she wasn't sure, until the pills kicked in and she fell fast asleep.


	8. Maycomb Hotel

_**I'm switching to updating every other week for a while, since I've decided to do NaNaWriMo and so I'm not going to be able write this for all of November (or next week, since I'll be planning). This way I'll be able to make it to the end of NaNo just running off my backlog. So yeah, I'll go back to every Sunday in December.**_

* * *

It was 7:00 at night when Scout woke to Atticus calling her name from across the room. "Henry will be over in a half hour," he said once she showed a slight sign of consciousness, and then he closed the door, not asking why she had spent the whole afternoon sleeping, or why she wore such a terribly confused expression. And she found that she was, in fact, terribly confused. Her mind was completely fogged over, and for the life of her she couldn't remember why. Had she been drinking? But no, Henry was coming over, and why would she have drunk without him?

Henry. It had been something about him.

Henry.

 _Henry._

She had seen Henry already that day, in the courthouse, nodding along to that racist bastard from God knows where. He had stood in front of the entire county, silently showing his approval for the ideas that her father had fought for with so much devotion that it had ruined his daughter's life. He'd ignored the way Maycomb slandered Scout, but he hadn't extended such amnesty to negroes.

Unless she hadn't. Perhaps she had dreamed it. The pills she remembered taking were just because she couldn't stand Alexandra anymore, and nothing else she remembered from that afternoon had been real. But if she'd taken a pill because of Alexandra, why had gone right to sleep instead of trying to do _something_ with the rest of her day, and why was the world still so hazy? It never took her long to recover from the sedatives. But if it really had happened, and she had really taken 2 pills despite never having done so in her life, it would explain why she couldn't quite make out the whole room, why she had to force her legs and arms to move, why her head was throbbing. Jesus Christ, her head felt like it was completely gone.

Scout was certain she looked like shit. Surely Henry would take one look at her, see a squinting, pale-faced mess, and tell her to stay home and that they'd go out the next day. But no, as she checked herself in the mirror in an attempt to make herself presentable, she saw that her color was still proper, her eyes seemed perfectly alert and there wasn't a sign at all that she was completely and utterly gone. God damn it. She'd have to somehow talk to Henry while high out of her mind, and have to discover if she really had seen that meeting in the courthouse.

She stumbled out of the bathroom and checked her watch. 7:25 already. She had no hope of regaining her senses before she would be with Henry. She wished she could just tell him she was feeling under the weather, that something had come over her that afternoon, but what if he'd heard noises from the negro balcony and could piece together exactly what she'd done? It would be better to fake lucidity, no matter how painful.

Henry rang the doorbell, and Scout greeted him with a smile, trying to ignore how somehow such a tiny gesture was suddenly so exhausting. Immediately her focus began to slip, but she still heard Atticus ask Henry a question she couldn't possibly ignore: "How was the meeting?" If only Atticus knew what had transpired in the meeting, he would be furious. But then again, Scout didn't really know what had happened herself. She still could have merely imagined it.

The next thing she knew, she was answering his "How are you?" with "fine," asking him what they were doing (just dinner at the Hotel if she didn't mind, he had some work to clear up before Monday), and entering the car. Upon recalling the previous night's excursion she made sure her hands were folded in her lap, so that Henry had no hope of grabbing one. She never wanted to touch the bastard ever again.

He let the car ride be silent, thank God. Even if he was a liar, at least he had never forced her into conversation. And that night, when she didn't know how long she could act pleasant, the less she spoke, the better. All she needed was time, and then she'd come up with an excuse to never talk to him again. But if she didn't have an excuse, if he knew she'd snuck into the meeting… Maycomb thought she was odd enough as it was.

Scout's body seemed to move without her input. She got out of the car, he opened the door for her, she entered, and they sat at a table for two. She smiled again, in an attempt to be polite. And then he asked what she'd done that day.

Shit. She couldn't tell the truth, but she could get away with merely leaving out the pertinent details. "Not much. Church, and then I was stuck in the house with Alexandra all afternoon. It didn't take long for me to get tired of her and take a walk around town. After that I just hid in my room." Henry laughed at the last sentence, and Scout found herself smiling too. Good. He'd believed it, and she hadn't technically lied.

She knew the next step would be to ask what he'd done in return, but she didn't dare. She didn't want to know the answer, to see if he would lie to her, or even worse, if he would tell the truth. So instead, looking for a way to fill the silence, she ended up asking, "What was the sermon about? I can never pay attention in church in Maycomb. I just know everyone's staring at me." Damn it, why had she said something so vulnerable to a man who'd already gone and betrayed her? He had probably been betraying her for years by hanging out with those racists without her knowing, and yet still she confided in him. He had no right to know how the stares made her feel or how there was not a single thing in Maycomb that didn't put her on edge.

He explained it to her, something about being prepared and living a proper Christian life despite all the many distractions of the modern world. Scout nodded along as best as she could, and pushed through the haze of pills every so often to catch a few sentences and comment in a way that implied she actually cared. The irony of him faithfully recalling sermon when he'd also gone and listened to a man who'd made God a segregationist monster, almost as racist as Alabama itself, crossed her mind, but she didn't have enough energy to entertain the thought for long.

Sometime during the discussion, a waiter came and asked for food. It killed her to see Henry being polite to him. The poor man was a negro and didn't have a clue about the awful slander Henry had enabled earlier. Hell, he probably thought Henry was a decent, honorable gentleman and that Maycomb would change just as willingly as parts of the country already had, with how easy the NAACP made legislative action look.

Despite her disgust, Scout managed to recite her order. She immediately forgot what it was, knowing she would barely eat any of it anyway. Of course, Henry would notice and ask if she was feeling alright, but by then, the charade would almost be over. She could say she was feeling tired, and then it would be entirely plausible if the next day she was suddenly ill. Yes, that would be it, and then she would have a few days to find an excuse to suddenly break their engagement. After that, all she would need was an excuse to go back to New York early and stay there for good. She wouldn't return to the shithole that was Maycomb until Atticus' funeral, and maybe not even then. She'd make her yearly visits to Nashville instead.

Henry finally finished his recap of the day's teachings, and she responded with something resembling praise, directed at the few parts she actually heard. He smiled. "Do they have sermons like that in New York?"

"Yeah, just about," she answered, knowing better than to say the truth. Scout didn't always attend church in New York, where it wasn't as crucial a part of the social structure, and she sometimes found herself wandering into different churches, wondering what it was like outside of familiar Methodist services. The Methodist church itself, she found, only varied in music and architecture when transplanted to the north. The teachings were still the same ones she'd grown up on, ones that she knew she should strive to follow even though so many of them pertained to raising families.

Henry let the silence sit just long enough for their food to come and conversation to be rendered unnecessary. He made a few comments that Scout didn't quite hear and chose to ignore, and then, he made one that broke through her fog loud and clear. "I suppose up there they probably think as highly of Maycomb as you do." And though before, he'd tolerated her hatred of the place so well and just the previous night had understood why she saw Nashville as such a paradise, now she could catch a hint of disdain in his voice. He hid it as well as he could, but she'd known him for so long that it jumped out at her regardless. It sound familiar, but from where, she couldn't place it. Any other time, it would be so easy, but she could barely focus on what he said as it was...

The man in the courthouse. It sounded like him and the way he spoke of negroes and the north, as if some differences could never be reconciled and this was one of them. Was Henry Maycomb, and Scout New York? He was right, of course. There was no desire for the agricultural, slow life of the south up in those bustling streets. But admitting it could expose the rest of the meeting and remind Scout what a liar Henry was, and that was a gamble she didn't want to take. Still, what other choice did she have?

So she nodded and mumbled some form of agreement, waiting for Henry to say whatever it was he was hoping to express by making the comparison.

Henry shook his head gently. "I suppose they just don't understand how fond one can be of the place they were born and raised, even if it is imperfect. They may not understand, but the way it sometimes seems like they wish we'd go away entirely…"

So he wouldn't say it. That they didn't wish for the demise of the south, but the end of its racism, its judgement, its insular nature. Since he was speaking to her, they just wanted to destroy his childhood, but she could tell he was leaving out the words he heard in the courtroom.

He then looked towards her, somehow having the nerve to drag her into if. "You don't like it, but you don't try to change it. You just accept that you're better off in New York and stay up there. They should do the same." Just like the negroes should accept that their better off as inferiors, she thought bitterly. It was too like Maycomb to force people to conform or leave; she'd thought that Henry, in dating her, had already proven he didn't agree with it, but now she knew better.

She nodded again, and answered simply, "Perhaps they should. I haven't given it much thought." It wasn't a complete lie, after all, and all she needed was to appease him for the moment, so that he would return to eating, and once he was done, the torture would be over. For now, she was becoming more clear-headed, and once she had her wits entirely about her, she knew she wouldn't be able to stand him for one more second. So she let the rest of the date pass in silence, until, at last, he was done.

Henry looked up at her then, and she knew the message was clear from her almost untouched plate and the way she sat, watching the second hand make its way around her watch again and again. "I'm not quite myself tonight," Scout said, and this was unambiguously a lie; Henry was the one who wasn't himself. But he understood it to mean that she was tired, or perhaps ill, just as she'd intended, and he nodded and paid quickly.

He did not attempt to make conversation as she rode home. That was perhaps his saving grace. For while Scout knew he still believed thing she would never agree with, the vile, hateful things that made her loath Maycomb with every part of her soul, he somehow still had the gall to treat her with respect, to make her the singular exception to the rule of universal conformity. He was so incredibly close to seething the truth; he already saw the people of Maycomb as unfair in their treatment of her, but he would still spend a Sunday afternoon with them, spreading lies as if they were gospel. That alone made her run inside the second he parked outside her house, without even a goodbye.

Without entirely knowing what had compelled her to do so, she found herself walking into Atticus' study, where he still sat at the end of that day. For her, it had been long and painful, and yet for him, it had merely been solitary. Perhaps he had been able to enjoy the biblical day of rest. She couldn't be sure. But what amazed her most about him was something she hadn't realized she'd always wondered, something that then, while the effects of the pills still linger, she couldn't help but ask. "Atticus, how can you stand it here?"

He turned to her, and blank-faced, only asked, "What do you mean?"

"So many bad things happened to you in Maycomb. Mama died, Jem died, and well, there was everything that happened with me. Haven't you ever just wanted to leave?"

Atticus nodded in understanding, as she knew he would, but then said simply, "All of those tragedies could have happened somewhere else. Resenting Maycomb for them would be placing the blame in the wrong place. They were not the fault of any one person or place."

She left the room as quickly as she'd entered it, and found herself once again seeking refuge in her bed. No blame? Had he not seen the way Maycomb had always treated her, the way they had taken what had happened to her and made it immeasurably worse with their expectations and their twisted beliefs? Even Atticus, the man who had understood everything, who so frequently seemed to be the only honest man in Maycomb county, didn't see the lies she had that afternoon, perched in a courthouse, smothered by her own horror. No pills could keep her from seeing that. Only sleep could, and somehow, despite the resentment and bitterness soaring through her head, she found that immediately.


	9. The Coffee

_**If you couldn't tell from the all caps note in the story description, I screwed up pretty badly and uploaded an old chapter instead of chapter 6 way back when it was first posted. I'm really proud of chapter 6, and without it it's hard to understand exactly how betrayed Scout is in chapter 7. So please, if you haven't yet, read it. Now for the real author's note.**_

* * *

 _ **Go Set a Watchman has its moments of brilliance, and the coffee scene is most definitely one of them. I felt like anything I wrote would pale in comparison. Yet somehow through bringing in thoughts that couldn't be present in the original story and exploring how this Scout would experience this scene differently (and seguing into another flashback), I actually managed to write a scene I am fairly proud of. So yay!**_

 _ **Also, warning: description of attempted suicide.**_

* * *

If only Scout hadn't spend so much of her time in Maycomb pretending she wasn't near her aunt. Sure, listening to Alexandra would have made her even crazier than she was, but at least she would have known about the Goddamn coffee.

Once Scout expressed her surprise at learning a dozen of Maycomb's young women would be in her living room ogling her for an entire Monday afternoon, she was quickly told that Alexandra had already warned her about it. According to her aunt she'd even agreed to it, although Scout knew that it only would have been to get her to stop talking.

Coffees were yet another chance for all of Maycomb's eyeballs to be concentrated on her. No matter what, everything she did that afternoon would quickly be news across town. After all, she was poor, fucked up Scout Finch, who could have been such a nice lady if her mother wasn't dead and she hadn't been taken advantage of at eight years old; the girl who ran away to Nashville and then ran away to New York and who must be seen while she's in town because one day she'll refuse to come back at all; the girl whose mother and brother had both dropped dead, but somehow despite being less stable than either of them, she was the one still alive and kicking.

Even knowing that every woman would be mentally preparing a report on her, she could only bring herself to concentrate on surviving the whole affair. She was used their talking, but being around it for hours while they tried to catch her up on Maycomb's gossip and drag some out of her would be as painful as a thousand conversations with Alexandra. Of course, Scout was certain that with Alexandra planning it, it would be made even more miserable in ways she couldn't even imagine.

Sure enough, Scout was forced by her aunt to greet every guest as they walked through the door, even though it looked absolutely ridiculous to have a thousand guests in dresses and stockings being welcomed by a host in slacks and a blouse. There was no doubt that all the folks not in attendance would be told she still hadn't learned to dress properly.

The women clustered in groups, and though she couldn't be bothered to pay attention to any of Maycomb's happening, she could quickly identify the cliques by appearance alone. There was a certain way women shifted as they passed through the stages of life, and it seemed she was inside an exhibit designed to illustrate the process.

The ones who had been married for a while and had produced several children were somehow growing thicker and more run-down every day. How the hell did their offspring turn them from spritely young women to old, domesticated hens? They were nothing like the lithe girls they had once been, who when stockinged and shod were appealing to every bachelor in the county. These women had to tailor their dresses to hide extra weight and wear makeup to cover their wrinkles, and every last one was incapable of speaking about anything other than children and societal affairs.

Then there was the cluster of women who had only just began motherhood. They still retained most of their former beauty, but the remnants of weight they'd gained in pregnancy still clung to their midsections, and there was an unspoken tiredness in their nature, caused by staying up all night with infants. It wouldn't be long before they were completely worn down as well.

The worst among the latter group were those who'd only just gained the privilege of joining it, their bellies suddenly horrendously distorted. It seemed their entire duty in the social circle was to be doted on by each woman and receive endless pieces of advice for when the infant inevitably came. Their steps suddenly seemed so heavy, but their laughs were unimaginably light for having come from creatures that doubled in size over the course of mere months.

When the two groups were viewed at once, it seemed like the doctors in Mobile hadn't saved her life all those years ago, but instead redeemed her from this horror, this steady aging, this descent into domesticism. What little figure Scout had she would retain forever, never burdened by baby weight, and age wouldn't take over her looks so quickly or so severely, keeping her from showing the strain of life on her face until she was in her forties. To think that somehow she had learned to consider herself undesirable for not being able to provide her future husband a pack of children. He would discover the opposite was true when every other wife he ran into had grown old and ugly and she appeared as youthful as she had at twenty.

Scout knew better than to approach either group of mothers. All they were able to do was gossip and discuss child rearing, and as the first pastime Scout abhorred and the second she'd never take up, she would quickly ruin the conversation. Worse, she knew, they somehow viewed motherhood as a gift, despite the toll it took on their bodies and the way it made all their conversations unforgivably dull. Raising children was an honorable profession to them, and so Scout had suffered such a great loss by never being able to have offspring of her own. She had no desire to be trapped by their pity for several long hours.

Instead, she found herself moving towards the group she more closely reflected, a group of women all chatting about their fiances and new husbands, discussing becoming used to the domestic, making a home, and discovering the countless joys of married life. She still found it a hopelessly unpleasant conversation as they aimed to please their husbands and create a good household, which would no doubt result in their own personal broods, but it was the best she could hope for since every single one of the women in the room, no matter what circle they belonged to, strove to be the matriarch of her own family, starting a line of her offspring that would run unbroken until the end of time.

Surely they all believed it to be a shame that the Finch bloodline was slowly dying, with only her cousin Francis and her aunt Caroline's children to carry it on and none of them actually possessing the name. It wouldn't be long before there were no more Finches in Maycomb, and maybe they would die out all together. Could any of these women think of a greater tragedy than Atticus never becoming a grandfather, now that his son was dead and his daughter sterile? Atticus didn't care, of course; he knew there was nothing one could do about those things. But surely every so often when they were chatting in their sitting rooms at night, the rest of town would discuss what a shame it was that it had happened to such a nice family.

She was grateful to receive a reprieve from Alexandra, calling her into the kitchen to pass out coffee and sandwiches. She moved between the women, passing out cups and then filling them, creating the illusion that she was somehow domestic. The women took note of her as she made her rounds, their eyes silently taking in her demeanor, her apparel, and the way so little of her had changed. She had strove to be vaguely presentable for as long as she had remembered, always kept her hair neat and her slacks ironed, always attempted to be pleasant to the folks in town no matter how much she despised their habits. And still, they stared.

She had learned to read the glares: _I suppose she's as proper as she'll get; some girls never change; 17 years later and she still won't wear skirts; poor thing; wonder if she ever learned to move on._ In one or two women's eyes, she even saw concern and care, even if it was superficial and overly pitying: _there's still time for her to improve; I hope one day she'll be happy._ And then, she caught a glance that was too familiar.

It must have been years since the woman had seen her, because she looked at Scout with a sort of horror fused with despair. It was as if she was suddenly realizing that there had never been any hope for Scout, that it would never be something she just got over. And then, the look turned to pity, but not the rehearsed, superfluous pity of the matronly set; new, raw pity born from understanding. It all combined into a look Scout had seen before.

 _It was all over. Atticus was standing in the doorway of her room, and it was clear from his expression that he knew. His eyes were no longer understanding; they were terrified. He ran out of the room, and she heard him calling for Uncle Jack, back in Maycomb for Thanksgiving, and when he came back, his entire face was covered in desperation. She'd never seen him like that. He'd always hidden his feelings from his face, but suddenly his eyes were rimmed with red and a heaviness had settled over his features._

Breathe. She had to breathe. In and out, and it would be fine. If she remembered to inhale and thought about other things, everything would be alright. There was no way she could grab her purse and hide in the bathroom. She had food to pass out, pleasantries to make. They would notice if she slipped away to swallow a pill. She just had to remember that Atticus was at work, and she was in the living room. He wasn't standing in the doorway to her room anymore; that had been twelve years ago. She needed to ignore the way all the women's eyes lingered on her for too long, like they knew what she had done when she was a teenager and keep her mind on the task at hand.

 _She shouldn't have screamed, but she hadn't been able to control it. It hadn't been too loud, at least. She had thought there was still a chance Atticus would leave her alone, wouldn't check in, and wouldn't see her sitting there in her bed, staring at her wrist as it slowly bled. Was it enough? She'd always heard of people "slitting their wrists," not wrist, but she knew she couldn't risk shrieking again or Atticus would definitely come. He wasn't supposed to find her until she was already gone. But instead, he was there in the doorway, looking at her and the knife lying beside her. She knew it was painfully clear what she'd tried to do._

No. She was not fourteen years old anymore, dealing with a torrent of memories that had worsened dramatically after that Halloween. Her life no longer felt like all she did was wait for the next memory to seize her. She had Nashville now; she had New York. She would never have to return to Maycomb again. She wasn't trapped anymore, desperately looking for a way out. She was past that. She was happy. There was no use in remembering when she wasn't.

 _And still, even though she knew if she wanted to still be able to go through with it she should pick up the knife and use it on her other wrist, she found herself frozen, watching her wound. How long did it take to bleed out? How much would leak out onto her bed before everything would be over? Was there a way to make sure Uncle Jack couldn't fix it? She found herself praying that it would all be over before Atticus could return with him._

The memory had closed in too far. She knew there was no hope of pulling out of it by herself anymore. Her body was in the living room, but her mind was in the bedroom, and it could not be kept out for long. She needed to grab her purse and go to the bathroom. That was all she needed to do. Then everything would be fine.

 _She heard Atticus' footsteps, but remained entranced by her wrist. If only the blood would flow just a little faster, perhaps she'd have a chance. If only everything would hurry up and fade away. But instead, she was still perfectly conscious, sitting on her bed as Atticus moved beside her and probed her face with desperate eyes. "Were you trying to-?" He couldn't even finish the sentence._

Scout ran across the room, set down the coffee pot in her hands, and grabbed her purse. She only had to make it to the bathroom now and get a pill down. But her legs were suddenly so shaky, and her strides seemed so terribly small when compared to the massive expanse of the living room. She tried to focus on one step at a time, but she was barely able to see the house and her legs were refusing to even stand.

 _She didn't respond, concentrating instead on the sensation of dizziness she began to feel and hoping that it meant she'd be successful. But she could hear Uncle Jack's footsteps, and she knew he would know how to stop the bleeding and somehow resurrect her. Uncle Jack loved her and wanted her alive. He wouldn't see that she'd be happier if he left her alone._

She felt her knees collapse below her, her body suddenly lying on the ground. Faintly, she heard Alexandra's voice, although what she was saying and how she would attempt to save both of their reputations, Scout could not decipher. Instead, she fumbled with her purse for a few long seconds, knowing that if her secret was already out and the whole town now knew that she still struggled with the memories all these years later, taking the pills then and there couldn't make anything worse. But her fingers ceased to move, and suddenly, 1952 faded away completely.

 _Uncle Jack had sheets of gauze in his hands. He quickly pushed Atticus aside and grabbed her wrist. "It's not much," he said. "I should be able to stop the bleeding with just pressure." He held the gauze against Scout's wrist tightly, and only then did the pain begin to worsen. As her wrist was held in his vice-like grip, the pain took away her vision, and finally, just as she had longed for, everything faded to black._


	10. The Living Room

**_OK, so it's Monday. Not Sunday. I update on Sundays. But I'm traveling, and when you're traveling you forget what day it is and only now did I realize yesterday was Sunday. Sorry._**

* * *

 _S_ _he woke up to Jack sitting in the chair on the opposite end of the room, reading a book. There was an aching in her left arm. She lifted it up and saw that her wrist was covered in bandages—Goddamn it. She'd done it, Atticus had caught her, she was going to be locked up in a home for mentally unstable girls and she would be even more miserable than she already was…_

" _I see you're awake, Scout." Uncle Jack put down his book and stared across the room at her. "I put a few stitches into your wrist, just to make sure it would close up properly. The cut was surprisingly deep. If you'd known what you were doing, it probably would have worked." Reading the expression on her face, he continued, "I'm not going to tell you what mistakes you made. I much prefer you alive and well."_

 _Scout found herself stumbling to find words. "I- I don't- You don't- I just-"_

" _Scout. Let me make this easier for you. Atticus is at the landing. He told Alexandra that you're not well, and I volunteered to stay home with you. We're not telling her what happened." He set down the book on the floor calmly, and then looked back towards her. "I won't even tell Atticus anything you say to me unless you want me to. For rather obvious reasons, we're keeping this whole thing private."_

 _Scout nodded slowly. It was be a secret—that was no surprise. If the whole town knew she had tried to kill herself, Atticus and Alexandra would surely be blamed. Never mind that everything in town had a way to trap her inside a memory, never mind that she didn't even have control of her own consciousness—it would be Atticus' fault she couldn't stand it anymore. And of course, their gossip was intolerable enough without them knowing just how much she was struggling. Even if Atticus had ruined her chance to fix everything, at least he didn't make it worse. Because even as bad as it was, and as much as she wanted out of the endless parade of memories her life had become, she knew if the rest of Maycomb was involved, it would be even more unbearable._

" _Scout?" Jack's voice was gentle, pulling her out of her own thoughts. He looked at her in a way that was clearly trying to be understanding, but she knew he couldn't possibly know what the memories were like or how often they intruded. She had gotten good at hiding it—taking deep breaths and making sure her face looked relatively alert until it was over, or sneaking to the bathroom and popping a pill. But the memories had increased tenfold since that year's Halloween, and she didn't know why. Suddenly, every judgemental glance or out of place word was a trigger, and the hell never ended. There was no way to escape the memories in Maycomb and so her life had become merely waiting for the next flashback, a living hell. That was why she'd done it; that was crystal clear. But when he said, "Scout, Atticus and I want to help you. We want you to be OK. So I want to know what made you want to end your life," Scout still found herself unable to respond._

" _It's just… Atticus told you about how I get the memories, right?" Jack nodded. "They just-" She shook her head, gave up on trying to explain, and stuck with the blunt truth. "I hate Maycomb. Every single thing here brings them up and they never stop." There was no use in explaining it further. Either he'd understand or he wouldn't, and either way, unless some miracle happened and the memories disappeared, she was determined to figure out what she'd done wrong and try again anyway._

 _Uncle Jack nodded again, his face almost blank. Unreactive. She supposed he had to have prepared himself for a thousand different answers, and so nothing would yield a strong reaction. "I'd have to ask Atticus," he said, "but if it would keep you from trying to kill yourself again, you could live with me in Nashville. Atticus and I could come up with some reason for it to give to all of Maycomb, and at the end of the semester, you could transfer and go."_

 _Nashville. Scout had never been, but that could only be a good thing. Nothing there would bring up memories, no one there would know just what happened to her when she was eight, and in a city, surely people had better things to do than gossip incessantly. She found herself nodding, hoping that she would be able to survive the memories until the end of the semester. Not even two more months of hell and she would be out. "That could work." She forced a smile, though she was sure Jack would see right through it._

 _He nodded again before describing what it would be like. He was a solitary man, and she'd have to get used to that. He worked long hours and didn't often go out. But if all she wanted was a fresh start, it would be more than enough. In that moment, it was enough to placate her._

* * *

Scout woke on the living room floor, clutching her watch despite herself. She knew holding it drew attention to it, defeating the way it was supposed to cover the scar, but nonetheless she reached for it every time that memory recurred. Only two memories came with visible scars, the one on her wrist and those from her surgery in Mobile, and perhaps that was why those memories were the ones she dreaded the most. She could handle remembering one time or another she'd made a fool of herself by falling into a memory in public; she couldn't handle remembering those two times when she had so nearly died. She had gotten used to hearing about Halloween long ago, but the same couldn't be said of Thanksgiving.

Atticus gave her the watch, but other than that, he and Jack never talked about suicide and what she'd tried to do with her again. After that day, it was always Nashville, and when she'd be ready to move, and if she still felt up to it and wanted to go. Still, even if they tried to pretend it never happened, Scout noticed how all the cutlery had been moved and hidden, all pills aside from her own placed out of her reach, and how Atticus suddenly kept track of her comings and goings from the house. She knew that really, there was no way he could stop her from going out to the Eddy and drowning herself or jumping off the water tower, but she could see that he was making an attempt. It didn't do anything to deter her—the only that kept her alive for those two months was knowing she was about to leave Maycomb for good—but she knew nonetheless.

But she had remembered it in front of a crowd full of women who had never known what made her leave Maycomb at age 14 other than a lie invented by Atticus and spread by Alexandra. She hadn't even bothered to learn what they'd been told, she was so concerned with leaving. She knew she didn't reveal what had occured that November day and she could tell that all she'd done that time was faint, but even still, none of them had seen her since she lived in Maycomb. They had probably all assumed she'd gotten past it all years ago, as if she had any choice in the matter. But they had left, and only Alexandra was there, standing over her as she came to much as Jack had twelve years before.

"I had everyone leave, since obviously, you weren't well." Alexandra frowned, and Scout could see that she knew unwell wasn't the whole story. People who merely felt ill didn't search through their purses—and where had her purse gone? She went to ask, but remembered Alexandra would explain soon enough even if she didn't. It wasn't in her nature to keep secrets. "I told them I would plan another coffee when you were more up to it."

Scout muttered some form of agreement and pulled herself up off the floor, settling herself onto the sofa. It had been a long time since she'd fainted, but she didn't remember the headaches afterward being this bad. "Do you have any coffee left?"

"You shouldn't be drinking coffee. Clearly you need rest." Alexandra was as disapproving as always. Jesus, even fainting right in front of a crowd of people wouldn't gain her any sympathy. Then again, she supposed Alexandra was more worried about its effect on her reputation than on Scout's.

Scout found herself grumbling at her aunt despite herself. "I'm fine, I swear. I'm used to it. Give me a coffee and a moment to clear my head and I'll be good as new."

"Jean Louise, what on earth do you mean you're used to it?" Shit. She had thought Alexandra had d known about the memories. After all, Atticus would have known there was no point in keeping them secret when every child in Scout's grade had already seen them, even if they never got a proper explanation. Why, she figured the whole town knew that in her youth, she had swooned almost as much as any fine Victorian lady. Yet Alexandra was both her aunt and a hopeless gossip. It was a mystery, that was for sure.

"Jesus, Aunty, I would have thought you of all people would know I had them practically every day when I was eight and nine." Scout felt herself tense up, despite herself. She knew very well that mentioning those years in front of Alexandra never ended well.

Aunt Alexandra, too, tensed, and seemed to want to avoid that discussion as much as Scout did. "Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Still, that is the sort of thing most folks get over after childhood…"

Scout sighed. How could she possibly explain this to the woman who understood nothing about her, who thought that 1935 was a year that should be left undiscussed and who saw no excuse for anyone being less than proper? Her torrent of memories certainly wasn't proper—she knew if Alexandra wasn't so polite and so hesitant to talk about Halloween that she would have asked why she didn't just stop remembering. She decided the best approach was to stick to the relevant facts, and bring up anything else only as necessary. "I did grow out of them, more or less. And then I got them again when I was fourteen, and after that… it's been years, Aunty, honestly."

"Well, if they're coming back now, surely you should go see a doctor. You never know what could be wrong." Christ, how did Alexandra manage to be wrong every single time she offered advice?

"It's fine, Aunty, I swear. It's just that certain things set them off, and this is the first time in a long time I've been in such a large group of people." Such a glaring, judgemental group, anyway, Scout found herself thinking, but she knew in front of her aunt it was best to hold her tongue.

"Like what?"

"Oh, you know…" Scout found herself possessed with a sudden recklessness. She might as well let her aunt see all her bitter bluntness; it was bound to come out sooner or later anyway. "Anything that could bring up memories, really. Imposing drunk men, conversations that turn to hospitals or Halloween, almost any talk of childbearing, a hoard of women glaring at me just like all the kids in the schoolyard did whenever I woke up from one of these episodes…" The last statement was close enough to the truth that she hoped Alexandra would never question it. After all, if she knew Atticus had looked at her in the same way and with good reason, or if she knew just why Atticus looked at her like that, or if she knew how little scolding she'd gotten for such behavior… It would all be over. But knowing she had to give a proper explanation to avoid interrogation, she finished, "It happens all the time, and most of the time you wouldn't even notice, but every once in a while my mind completely slips away from me and I'll freak out and faint."

Scout found herself staring at Alexandra and discovering that for once, the woman was completely lost for words. She wasn't particularly shocked, or at least, if she was she hid it well, but she didn't say anything, simply looking at Scout for a few moments before going into the kitchen and returning with a mug of coffee. "I'll let you handle your own recovery, then," Alexandra said before once again retreating into the kitchen, no doubt about to call the entire county and apologize once again, but her voice held a strange quality. It wasn't sympathy or worry—Scout knew the sounds of both of those well. But this was something she'd never heard from her aunt. Uncertainty. To think, if just knowing about the memories was enough to make Alexandra doubt herself for the first time in her life, then it was a good thing she had no idea what Scout had been remembering. Knowing definitely have killed her. But to think she'd come so close to learning it...


	11. The Door

"Scout!" Alexandra opened Scout's door, disrupting her attempts to regain her composure through reading. Scout cursed how Alexandra came once again to ruin her peace, as if she hadn't made enough of a mess out of the day. She had thought that she'd scared her aunt into leaving her alone by telling her the truth. She should have realized that such a good thing couldn't last, but she didn't, and as was the way with anything involving Alexandra, it got worse.

"Henry is at the door. He wants to know how you're doing. He says you weren't feeling well on your date?" Her voice was full of fake sweetness, smothering her words as if nothing had ever happened earlier that day, but Scout couldn't miss the pointed look that accompanied the final question. God damn it. Alexandra thought Scout was a liar and had made up the memories to cover up her illness. She had already known Alexandra would find a reason to disapprove of Scout and disrupt her solitude, but thanks to Henry, that way was handed to her on a silver platter.

Scout put down her book and got up from her bed, deciding against smoothing down her dress or fixing her hair so that Henry would believe she was sick. Shit, was it 7:30? That meant she would end up stuck on another date if he discovered she was well. She was trapped yet again, between saying she was sick and facing Alexandra's wrath, or saying she wasn't and watching Henry spend an entire night spouting lies. All she could do was follow Alexandra over to the door and hope Alexandra would give Henry an answer that would please both of them. Instead, Scout received further evidence that all of Maycomb was conspiring to make her life hell.

Alexandra smiled again. Couldn't all of the women in her missionary circles and gossip webs see right through such a pasted on grin? If they could, it was a mystery why they continued to associate with her. "Scout, why don't you tell Henry how you're feeling? I know you were a little off earlier during the coffee, but you told me you'd bounce right back."

There was no way to respond to it without either ending up stuck going out with a two faced man or confirming any suspicions Alexandra might have held that she was lying . The only way she could have any hope for surviving was by answering neutrally. "I'm feeling alright. I could be better, but I'm fine."

"It's amazing how much a good night's sleep can fix," Henry said, through a smile that unlike Alexandra's was completely genuine. How could he be so kind, unable to stop smiling whenever he was around her, and yet associate with such vile people who held such despicable beliefs? The contradiction of it all made her even more furious than knowing she'd been dating a racist and a liar for years.

Before Scout had to fake an answer though, Aunt Alexandra responded to Henry instead. Scout would have been grateful, if only she had said anything else. It was far from the first time her aunt had spoke about her as if she wasn't there, but it was perhaps the most jarring. Normally she at least put on a facade of advocating for Scout's true needs, and was never so blunt as to contradict her. "I'm afraid Scout's being a bit of an optimist. She certainly wasn't feeling alright earlier. She fainted right in the middle of her coffee, poor thing."

The shock Henry displayed at that seemed so clearly fake to Scout that she almost laughed out loud. Even if he was a bastard, he apparently remembered that Scout was more than used to faints, and also knew that Alexandra would still expect him to have a reaction. "Well, I suppose then we definitely won't be going out tonight."

In her typical overbearing, intolerable fashion, Alexandra responded, "In all honesty, Henry, with how sudden it was, I'm not sure if I'd want to take her out for a while. I'd hate to hear of her fainting again in public and hurting herself." Couldn't Alexandra see the coffee was as public and painful as it could possibly get? Still, Scout would have been grateful for the excuse to stay away from Henry, if only Alexandra said it as if she was still eight years old. Back then, it was reasonable to keep her inside and within eyesight, but now, she had been managing on her own in New York for four years. Of course she could make it through a short outing, even if it was in Maycomb. Then again, anything with Henry had the potential to be painful in other ways.

"Well, Alexandra, you were there and I wasn't, and I want to do what's best for Scout," Henry said. For a moment, she was relieved by the response, knowing that she wouldn't have to tolerate another hour with such a despicable man, but then, so naturally it seemed he didn't even think about the action, he reached to take her hand. Far worse, instead of grabbing it, which would have caused her to yank it away in disgust but wouldn't cause any lasting damage, he accidentally took hold of her left wrist, right on her watch. She felt no pain—the scar was twelve years old—but nonetheless, her head began to swim away from her. As spots invaded her field of view, she stumbled backwards a few steps. Her hands instinctively moved to clutch her head as if it would somehow stop the reeling. She only realized what her alarm at Henry touching her wrist might have revealed after she regained her bearings.

She was left with no desire to explain when both Alexandra and Henry had done more than enough to stir her hatred. After all the little things that had made Scout believe Alexandra at least tried to treat her properly, after how careful Henry had always been with her despite his corrupted morals, it was all discarded in one conversation. There was no consistency with Maycomb people. The way they had changed even when she'd been certain she understood them so almost hurt more than the memories she'd relived and the racism she'd seen while back in town. It was the combination of the three that made her certain she couldn't remain there another day.

Scout stormed out of the room and into Atticus' study. She knew that the longer she talked, the more questions Atticus would have, none of which she wanted to answer, so she kept her conversation brief. "I'm calling Uncle Jack tonight, and taking the next train out to Nashville. I don't know if I'll return or if I'll spend the rest of my trip there."

"You're free to do whatever you want with your time home, but I'd warn you against such a hurried plan. It'd be best to wait a few days and tie up loose ends in Maycomb first." Atticus was rational as always; that was a trait she'd never learn to understand.

She shook her head and answered, "In all honesty, I don't think I could survive a few more hours in Maycomb, much less days," before exiting the room again. She didn't need to hold a proper conversation with him and prolong the amount of time she stayed.

Her next destination was the kitchen, where she picked up the phone. "Can I please be connected with Nashville? Jack Finch, Klondike 5-0-4-7-6." After a moment, her uncle picked up the line.

"Jack Finch." He was not one to answer the phone with anything more than a utilitarian introduction.

"It's Scout. I'm in Maycomb right now. If you don't mind, I'll be taking the next train to Nashville. Once I'm at the station, I'll call you from a payphone and you can pick me up." The clearer her plan, the better. Jack was also not one to collaborate on logistics. If she didn't deliver him a clear plan, he'd come up with one himself. She wanted to leave as soon as she could. A well-made plan likely wouldn't have her leaving until morning, and his plans were always thought-through.

"OK. I'll see you then," Jack answered, before hanging up. She was used to his almost laughably taciturn nature on phone calls, and so she waited for the familiar click of the call being ended and stayed on the line until once again, she was speaking to the operator.

"Can you connect me with a taxi company?" Within a few moments, she'd arranged for a car to arrive at her house and only had to wait for it to arrive. Her belongings had barely been unpacked, and so it took her only a few minutes to get them back into suitcases. Not wishing to face Henry or Alexandra again, Scout elected to watch for the car through her bedroom window. When it arrived, though, she made sure to leave through the living room.

Henry was still by the door, and so as she went to exit, she had the chance to ask him a question. "Henry, what was that meeting Atticus was asking you about yesterday?" She fought to keep her tone casual, so he wouldn't know it was little more than an accusation.

"Oh, they've formed a citizens' council. It meets every Sunday in the courthouse. It's quite informative." Scout immediately noticed the way he refused to meet her eyes, and in response, let herself become as harsh with him as she'd wanted to ever since she walked in on that Sunday's lecture.

"You know Henry, they write about citizens' councils in New York papers. They write about them a lot." She paused for a moment and watched as his pupils widened with fear. She had managed to terrify him without even telling him the truth, that she hadn't read about it, but seen it. Plenty of news of the south was in the papers, but just like Maycomb itself, Scout attempted to avoid it. But even if the source was different, her knowledge was the same.

"I know all about the work they do to spread racist ideology throughout towns, their attempts to fight against civil advancement, and of course, their pure hatred for negroes." She made every phrase a direct allegation against him, as if she was a judge listing the charges against him. But then, she switched from accusing and angry to pure, unfiltered bitterness. "I always thought, when reading those articles, that if any of the people I loved back in Maycomb heard of one forming in their town, they'd be outraged. But what did you say it was? Informative? Do you enjoy sitting in the courthouse and being _informed_ of how inferior negroes are to whites?" When Henry hesitated, she added, "I thought you were better than that, but I've been wrong before."

Scout moved to open the door, and suddenly Henry found his words. "Wait! There is something you should know." She saw him swallow, straighten his shoulders, and clear his face of all betrayal. It was another lie, but this time one being told by his body. "I'm at the meetings only to keep an eye on them, so I'll know if they're staging any big demonstrations or attacks and can report them. Atticus would do it himself if he had a prayer of being taken seriously there. But considering the entire town knows he fought so hard for equality that it got his daughter raped, everyone would see right through it." Henry sighed, but appeared to be finished.

Scout had no desire to somehow validate his words by answering him. He would only hear his own points repeated back at him, not whatever truth she said. He was selfish, in believing that just because he wanted Scout as a fiance he could have her, and even more so in believing that he was somehow better than negroes. Selfish people didn't listen to reason. So instead of trying to explain to him just how wrong he was, she picked her suitcase back up, pushed her way through Henry to get to the door, and entered the taxi. For the entire ride, all she could do was concentrate on the fact that she'd never have to be back in Maycomb talking to someone as thick-headed as him again.


	12. Nashville

_**So, sorry for not updating in forever. Life went through a rough spot, and when you're struggling to maintain schoolwork, obviously fanfiction falls by the wayside. That said, I'm back now, and seeing as after this, there are only 3 chapters left, new chapters will go up as I finish them. No more schedule, which means these chapters should be getting put up as quickly as I can write them. Enjoy!**_

* * *

Scout got off the train in Nashville to discover that her uncle was already waiting for her. Jack was standing by the door of the train with a smile (she found it both amusing and pathetic that he knew her so well he could even predict which car she'd be in), and Scout found that she'd never been more grateful to see him. Even when he'd taken her up to live in Nashville, there had been a sense of apprehension tainting her joy. It was an inescapable worry, the fear that nothing would change and she would be as miserable in Nashville as she was in Maycomb. Now, she knew that Maycomb was an unredeemable hellhole, a place she would only return to when Atticus was on his deathbed, and Nashville was her true home. Merely at the sight of Jack, she felt as if she was back in his apartment surrounded by overturned books, Rose Aylmer rubbing up against her legs. For the first time in days, she felt at ease.

"I'm glad you decided to come back," Jack said, his eyes gleaming in the way they so rarely did. It took a moment of true happiness to break through his composed nature and provoke the expression. "I was worried you'd forget to visit me at all."

"I'd never forget. I couldn't, even if I tried." How could she forget the only place she'd ever felt comfortable and safe? "Now, how did you know when I would arrive when I didn't know it myself?"

"Oh, it's too nice a day to spend inside. I thought I'd head down to the station and watch every arriving train until you got off one." It was the sort of logic only her uncle seemed to follow—reasonable, yet distinct. There weren't many people in the world who thought like Jack Finch. Even his niece, for all her admiration of him, was frequently surprised by his conclusions. They were entirely correct, more often than not, but his explanations tended to be either nonsensical or incredibly lofty.

"I take it your car is outside?"

"Of course."

"Then I suppose it'd be best to continue this conversation while we drive." Much like her father, Uncle Jack barely ever drove, preferring to travel on foot. It was a habit Scout had resented when in Maycomb, where she was always terrified by how vulnerable she was, with nothing between her and the horrible people that could always be waiting in the woods. Once she was in Nashville, however, the systems of store windows and crowds of people made her wonder how anyone could stand driving. The city formed a brilliant spectacle too easily missed in a car. Jack had wholeheartedly agreed when she'd first expressed the sentiment. If it weren't for the distance between his apartment and the station, she knew full well they'd be walking there. Even then, he had probably considered it for a while before remembering that she'd be carrying suitcases.

At first, the car was quiet, filled merely with the humming of the engine and their breathing. Scout wouldn't have shattered the silence if it weren't for how well she and Jack knew each other. No matter how well she tried to hide it, it wouldn't take him long to figure out that she'd been running away from something. It was better if she told him first, to reduce the harm.

She started casually. "Do you know they have a citizens council in Maycomb?" She had to fight to keep her tone level.

"I can't say I'm surprised." Scout breathed a silent sigh of relief. Jack had the potential to launch into lengthy explanations, and such a brief answer was a blessing. Then again, she should have expected as much. Out of all people, Jack knew how closed-minded the town was.

She nudged closer to what she needed to say. "Did you know Henry Clinton is in it?" Despite herself, she could hear edges of betrayal seeping into her speech.

Jack frowned. "I suppose it was inevitable that he got dragged in. That's how these things usually are. They start out confined, but by the end, perfectly good citizens are dragged in and corrupted." It was the level of analysis she expected from her uncle, but not there or then. With those circumstances, his usual level-headed approach was downright maddening.

"Perfectly good?" That assertion, in particular, made Scout want to spit. "No perfectly good man could sit there and listen to the things they had to say about negroes without batting an eye."

"And how exactly did you come to know this?" Jack kept his eyes forward, but his voice was fixed so firmly that she still felt as if he was staring her down. Atticus would have given her the benefit of the doubt and assumed she had phrased it poorly. Uncle Jack was direct, and so he immediately caught the implication that she'd been there.

"I was taking a walk on a Sunday afternoon, and I saw cars outside of the courthouse. I couldn't help but investigate, and the things they said… I couldn't bring myself to repeat them." She sighed.

Still, Jack remained focused on the road in front of him and answered her with another stiff question. "I take it that's the reason you're joining me in Nashville?" She would never understand how in the midst of such a discussion, he effortlessly kept the emotion out of his voice.

"Yes." She was cornered, and it was all her fault. She didn't want to admit it, but her uncle knew that she usually didn't stop in Nashville during her usual visits home. She made separate trips to see Jack, if only so that they wouldn't be contaminated by the irritability that defined her stays in Maycomb.

"And you saw Henry in said meeting?"

By that point, it should have been a given. "Yes."

"And did you tell him you did?"

"No. He admitted it to me a few days later, though, out of his own volition. Atticus had asked him how his meeting was. I asked what the meeting was." It was not a lie, though to her, it felt like one. That made it sound like it was something Henry had been proud of. But no, even if he was a racist bastard, just like everyone else in Maycomb, he at least had the decency to try and cover up for it. His excuses had held no weight, but at least he'd made them.

Uncle Jack didn't respond, and she wondered if he still possessed the ability to somehow sense what she didn't say. After a moment, he asked a final question. "Do you intend to make amends with him?"

Scout almost laughed, but kept her answer to a simple "no." Once again, she suspected Jack deduced the rest.

She could hear Jack's short, stifled inhale, the way she knew he breathed while trying to swallow an opinion. That was the problem with her uncle. He was kind, but to a fault. He might not have agreed with everyone, but he would forgive anyone. He believed everyone's actions were right according to their own conscience and that was all that mattered. Scout discovered the holes in that logic when she was eight, and did not understand how her uncle still lived under the philosophy.

They rode the rest of the way in silence—Jack would never speak unless prompted and Scout had no intention of pushing him to say things she knew she'd disagree with. Jack had always liked Henry, and likely always would. Just as with everyone else, Henry had made a good impression on her uncle early on. Even then, when she could no longer stand the man, she had to admit that he was charming. He held despicable beliefs and lived in a shithole of a town, but he could get along with anyone. It would take a miracle to stop Jack from taking his side, and she knew she'd never had that much luck.

Within a matter of minutes, they were back at the familiar apartment. It was outside of the city center, where Jack could never get the peace he required for his twin habits of reading and writing, but still within walking distance of most of its spectacle. His office, she knew, was down the road. She still had the phone number there committed to memory from her days in high school, so she'd be ready just in case something went wrong. What something was, Jack had never needed to clarify.

The scent was the first sign that Scout was truly home: old paperbacks and black coffee. Indeed, if there was a single constant to Jack's dwelling throughout all the years Scout had been there, it was empty coffee cups and half-finished books covering every horizontal surface. When she had lived there, Scout made a point of gathering and cleaning the cups every Sunday. The books, though, she could trust to be returned to their shelves whenever Jack picked them back up and completed them.

Jack's bedroom, she knew, was much the same, only with patients' files mixed in. The kitchen maintained its own clutter of cutting boards, spice jars, and cook books. The guest room was the only section of the apartment that was not quite as eclectic, and that was solely because of Scout. Its title was a mere formality, after all. She was the only guest Jack ever had. Everyone else simply waited for him to make his yearly pilgrimage to Maycomb.

Her bags were quickly deposited in the same corner they always were, beneath painting of Nashville's downtown from across the Cumberland river. Scout had justified the purchase by saying that surely, his guests deserve some decoration (for the rest of his living space, he deemed bookcases to be enough) and as they were from outside of the city, they would appreciate the local view. Jack had, of course, complimented her on her logic before reminding her that if she wanted it so badly, he'd prefer she just ask. She'd followed that advice when she'd found the antique, mahogany wardrobe and the heavy knit blanket in the same blues and greys as the painting. In the end, she'd created a room that was neat and clear, but also distinctly her own.

Still, she rarely stayed in her there for very long when she was in Nashville. Instead, she borrowed books from out of Jack's collection and read them in the sitting room, as the only time she would be allowed to remove them from Nashville was after his funeral, and she cooked dinners, the only way she'd found to repay him for all he'd done for her. It was as she was beginning to cook, sorting through the pans to find the one she needed, when the phone rang.

Jack barely lifted his head up from his tome. "Answer it, please." Scout put the cookware back as best as she could and obliged.

"Finch household, this is Dr. Finch's niece, Jean Louise, speaking." She put on her most Alexandra-like smile in an attempt to sound vaguely secretarial. All she expected in reply was a formality.

Instead, she was greeted by a familiar voice, as falsely genuine from a state away as it had been while they were a foot apart. "Scout? I'm so sorry for what happened today. May I speak to you?" Henry said. Scout immediately knew her answer.

"No, you may not," she answered, and put the phone down before Jack would suspect that it was more than a wrong number. She was so preoccupied with forgetting Henry and returning to dinner that she didn't hear Jack approach behind her.

"Henry Clinton?" he asked, with the same to-the-point nature he possessed over the phone.

Scout froze. Her silence was answer enough.

In response, Jack said, "Henry Clinton is a decent man. It came as no surprise to me that he would make sure your fight was resolved."

Scout ignored every impulse in her body telling her that her uncle was correct. Instead, she held back the trembling of her voice as well as she could while backing into the guest room. "Well, I had no intention of speaking to him ever again, and I wasn't about to abandon that." She shut the door behind her, finding a worn paperback of her own from a stack on the nightstand and beginning to read. Still, she couldn't block out Jack's words from the other side of the door.

"You forget," he said, "that a year ago, you loved the same things that now make you loathe him."

Scout wished that her uncle wasn't always right.


	13. Scout's Bedroom

_**So I'm dumb. I decided I'd finally finish this and said I'd get the last few chapters out quickly... and completely forgot that I had midterms and a performance quickly approaching and those would take up all of my free time. Hopefully, this time when I say this will be finished before long, I'll actually mean it.**_

Henry Clinton, Scout had decided, could fuck right off. Everything about him could go straight to hell: his charm, most apparent in the smile that she could even hear even while he apologized over the phone; the respect he'd somehow managed to garner from everyone in town, including the people like her aunt who believed in breeding over all; and the way he'd also grown up with all of Maycomb convinced he could never amount to anything, all for something that wasn't his fault, and so he understood her perfectly. Sure, all he'd had to deal with was them knowing who his mother and father were and that his bloodline was nothing more than trash, which could never compare to the constant stares she had endured while walking into school in slacks (she was lucky that the teachers had decided it was best not to question it, not after what had happened) or when she stopped stark in the middle of the street, her mind sent backwards in time. Still, he'd endured some token judgement. Furthermore, the men in New York couldn't understand what it was like to grow up in a suffocating southern town. Henry did. Besides, there was something alluring about his carefulness and his intellect, his Christian breeding but humble background, that made her wish she didn't hate him so damn much.

Henry was a complete and utter bastard, yes, but Jack was right in thinking that she didn't hate him because of that. She hated him because he was a racist and a liar and still, she could see all the reasons she had loved him peeking through. That was why it had hurt so much to stare down at him in the courtroom and see him nodding along to the stream of epithets. She knew he was better than that, that he had more empathy than almost every man she'd known. Yet there he was, listening eagerly. She should have known he'd have some explanation.

Maybe it made sense, what he'd said in Atticus' doorway. Maybe he really had been trying to do what was best for the town (as if a shithole like Maycomb really deserved to be saved, but they'd never agreed on that). Henry was still a bastard, of course, because his presence did nothing but encourage them. If he stood up to them, it would do more good than planting a thousand spies in their ranks, keeping an eye out for any dangerous schemes. Still, his intentions may have been good…

Or it was just Jack being Jack. He'd always been the devil's advocate, playing both sides of the field. She knew it came from a place of goodwill. That same optimistic reasoning was how he'd gotten Atticus to allow her to stay in Nashville for so long, never pushing her to move back, never suggesting she attend college elsewhere. Still, it grew irritating when even while faced with viewpoints that were despicable, Jack attempted to find the good. Not that it was terribly hard to find good in Henry Clinton, but that was what made him so dangerous, what had made his defection so inexcusable. He was too good not to know better.

Her book and any pretense of having been reading were long gone, replaced by conflicted circles of reasoning, when Jack knocked on her door. "May I come in?" At that point, Scout's throat had gone dry from holding her emotions in, but she managed an affirmative response. Jack opened her door, but stayed in the doorway. As if it was nothing at all, he stated, "I called back Henry Clinton."

Scout should have expected as much. Of course she should have seen it coming from the uncle who was too reasonable for his own good. He wouldn't just let Scout shut Henry out, not as long as there was a snowball's chance in hell of him having noble motives. He didn't care that forgiving Henry would inevitably lead to returning to Maycomb, and even if Henry was worthy of forgiveness, the town certainly wasn't. No matter what Jack had said to Henry, she wouldn't return.

But Jack knew that. Jack had known how deeply she despised that shithole since she was fourteen. The only reason he knew her like the back of his hand, could have her considering giving Henry the time of day again with a single line, was because she'd ran away from it. Now, when they both knew how she'd sat in the courthouse, listened to the vile slurs, seen damn near every white man in the town nod along in agreement, he would never send her back. She knew that. So when he said, "I told him that if he wanted to speak to you, he'd have to come up to Nashville," why did her bed seem to fall out from under her?

She regained her bearing just enough to ask, "And?" in reply.

Once again, she should have seen it coming. "He'll be here tomorrow." She sighed. Of course he would. God damn Henry Clinton, his chivalry, his charm, his determination never to let a disagreement go unsettled, and perhaps most unforgivable of all, how much he loved her. It had been painfully obvious, ever since the first time he spoke to her, ever since their first date, that he was hopelessly enamored. It was the only reason any man would go that long without physical contact, would accept how infrequently she returned to Maycomb, would have no trouble avoiding the multitude of topics that made her uneasy, from politics to school to marriage. No sane man would allow himself to even be seen with a girl who wore nothing but slacks, who cursed as easily as she breathed, who didn't hide her drinking but instead picked up the phone while slurring her words. Henry Clinton had been head over heels for her since they first ran into each other after the war and it was painfully clear. Now, he was so infatuated that he would subject himself to a long day of travelling just to argue with a girl who no longer wished to speak to him. It would be endearing, if it wasn't so God damn annoying.

Jack was still in the doorway, watching Scout carefully even though the news seemed to speak for itself. After twelve years, would he really force her to engage in further conversation when no doubt knew exactly what she was thinking? "Do you have something else to say?" she asked, knowing she sounded rude but finding it difficult to care through her exasperation with Henry.

Jack nodded slowly with a level of deliberation Scout was used to seeing on her uncle's face. Then, with all his customary courtesy, he asked, "May I come in?"

Scout's answer to any other person, even Atticus, would have been to ask why. Even with her state of general infuriation, though, she bit her tongue when talking to Jack. In the twelve years since she'd first moved to Nashville, he'd given her a thousand reasons to trust him. By then, no matter how much his words annoyed her, she couldn't help but respect him. "Yes, you may."

Jack drew close, a slight gravity in his steps, and sat on her bed. He met her eyes cautiously. "Scout, you'll have to forgive me. This is not something I should have done."

Immediately, a tension rose in her throat. She knew where conversations like this led. He'd been speaking to Henry, or Atticus, or God forbid, Alexandra, and gotten the wrong idea in his head. He'd allow Scout to explain herself, of course—that was both the man's saving grace and fatal flaw—but he wouldn't hesitate to repeat the slander or to take it to heart. For fifteen minutes, he would believe her to be in the wrong, and she would have to talk him out of it. She'd have to explain the way her very veins tensed when she saw Henry Clinton, how she never wanted to see him again. Beyond Henry, did she really need a reason for hating Maycomb and all the people in it? Surely, for two weeks a year every action she took was perfectly justifiable and neither Henry, Atticus, nor Alexandra had any right to take issue with them. The last thing she wanted was to fight with her uncle over anything that had happened there when at last, she was out.

Jack's eyes probed her face, no doubt sensing that her defenses were beginning to rise, and she knew he was waiting for some sort of consent. She nodded, not sure exactly what she was agreeing to, but already afraid she would regret it.

Jack reached into his jacket, and Scout began to clutch her slacks, trying to remain grounded. Now he was getting evidence. He had physical proof of whatever he was going to accuse her of, and that could never end well. When he pulled it out, she could no longer stifle her anxiety. "Shit." It was her half-empty pill bottle.

"I am aware I had no business going through your purse, but when I saw this so near to the top, I felt I had to." Scout's mind was overtaken by panic and his words seemed to be the only steady thing left in the world. She knew his opinions even before he said them; she could have predicted them years ago. Even when she first moved to Nashville, he'd never approved of the pills, slowly weaning her off them and only allowing her to keep a bottle around for emergencies. He only saw her there in Nashville, after all, where her attempts to remain calm worked. He couldn't know just how frequently emergencies occured in Maycomb and New York, or how easily they overtook her. He thought she could do without, and so he would keep the pills forever and she would be lost. She held her slacks tighter, trying to gain some stability, but instead she found herself slipping further away.

Jack leaned in and met her eyes. "This bottle is only four months old, Scout, and already it's half empty." His voice was too gentle. There were no footholds of emotion within it for Scout to cling onto. His words washed over her, and she struggle to absorb the meaning as the world in front of her began to fade.

 _Scout was in a side room of the old Maycomb Methodist church. The light dazzled her eyes, and she struggled to focus on her uncle's face in front of her. He'd half-carried her inside and deposited her into an old cushioned chair. Now he crouched in front of her so that they were at the same eye level. She could just barely make out his reassurances. "As far as anyone knows, you tripped and I caught you. If they ask, then that's what we'll tell them. No one needs to know any different."_

She blinked, trying to keep herself in Nashville, and nodded to show that Jack's statement had registered. She fought to process his every word. "I thought you had learned to control it without the pills. They're not designed for this. It's not healthy for you to rely on them this heavily." Her stomach dropped at the idea that somehow, the only reason she was ever able to cope could be hurting her, and once again she fell into memory.

 _The spots in front of her eyes began to clear, and at last she was able to mumble an affirmation. Jack addressed her again. "Not even Alexandra's crowd can blame you for falling apart in your brother's funeral. Even if somehow word does get out that you fainted, they won't hold it against you." Scout nodded, too exhausted by her partial collapse to dispute it. She closed her eyes for a moment, hoping it would help her regain her bearings. "Take a deep breath, Scout," Jack instructed, suddenly playing the doctor again. "It's the only way to calm down."_

Scout resumed eye contact with Jack, but his slight frown made it clear'd he detected her waning attention. He knew her so well, though—surely he could see that it was one of the God damn memories and not mere disrespect. Still, even he knew that there was only so long she could keep fighting. If she was lucky, this whole confrontation would be over in another few sentences, Jack would leave, and she could succumb to the memory in peace. But for now, she had to cling to something, anything, for a little while longer.

"I know it's tough for you, but you can't keep living like this. When you were prescribed these, it was in Maycomb in 1938. There was one doctor in the entire town and he didn't know any better. Now it's 1956 and you live in New York. There are plenty of psychiatrists, and all of them are more equipped than Dr. Reynolds ever was. You need to see one of them." Jack paused for a moment, but his words had increased the stinging anxiety in her chest, and she felt the panic tearing her away from him once again.

 _Scout slowed her breathing and attempted to grab her slacks for security, but was met only with the unfamiliar movement of a skirt. How had she forgotten already? It was the damn skirt that had done it in the first place. She had promised Jem that she would do better on her next trip to Maycomb, and even with him gone, she couldn't break the promise. But it was too much to stare at his body, eerily still, and feel the vulnerability of a dress beneath her. Suddenly, she had been eight years old again, in the middle of the woods, feeling a pain worse than anything in her entire life, and the Methodist church disappeared and Jack's arms were the only thing stopping her from falling into the aisle as he carried her away from the sanctuary. She had only pulled out of the memory once they were in the hallway. As long as Jem was still dead a few rooms over, and she was still so easily taken advantage of, waiting there for someone to come along and lift her skirts, there was no way she'd be able to calm down._

From Nashville, faintly, through the haze of memory she could hear Jack beginning to speak. "Scout, you deserve better than this. You deserve a real solution, not temporary pills. You need to see someone who can actually help you with this." Scout mumbled an agreement and heard her own voice as if from miles away before everything faded away for good.

 _Jack tapped on her shoulder, immediately easing her breathing, and calmed her with a single sentence. "You don't have to go back in there." She open her eyes to find his in front of her, gentle and receptive. "No one will blame you. We all know it can be a bit too much." Scout wanted to protest and claim that it wasn't Jem's death at all, it was the memories, but she knew that it never would have happened if he wasn't lying in that box, cold and pale, frozen in time, speechless and breathless. She couldn't go near that, not then, especially not in a dress. She nodded at Jack, then closed her eyes again, focusing on her breathing until she heard the door creak as it closed. Then, she hoisted herself off the chair and lay on the ground, pulling her knees into her chest and waiting. If she was lucky, she'd fall asleep there, and forget for a few precious moments that the only person in Maycomb she truly trusted was dead._

Scout blinked awake, gasping. Jack was still sitting beside her. He glanced over her with a contemplative expression, but remained silent while she found her bearings. The anxiety still tore at her chest, and she still struggled to focus her thoughts, but immediately, one thing was clear. Her head was too heavy and her breaths too strained for her to believe she could continue fainting without one day staying under. Spots clouded her vision as she sat up, preparing to speak. Her breath caught in her throat, but the moment it became unstuck, she whispered the one thing she knew for certain. "I don't want to do that again," she panted. "I'll see a psychiatrist. I promise."


	14. The Table

The instant Scout woke the next day, she knew what was coming. Henry God damn Clinton had already decided to chase her there all the way from Maycomb; he wouldn't even consider waiting long enough for her to catch her breath. Instead, just as she expected, the moment after she had gotten herself washed, dressed, and fed, he knocked on her door. Jack turned to her expectantly in response, and she replied, "You organized the meeting. You get the door."

Jack complied, and sure enough, Henry was in the doorway with a smile nearly as forced as any of Alexandra's. Of course, it eased the second he looked at her. Anyone would think he was looking at an angel sent down from heaven, because it wasn't enough that the bastard was willing to chase her to the ends of the earth, he also thought she was beautiful. Her, of all people, with her non-existent figure and her slacks, was somehow a marvel of a woman. It would be easier for Scout to hate him if not for that.

He wore the same buttoned shirt and jacket as usually, not a smidge more casual than anything he'd wear in court, and no wonder. It was a Wednesday, for fuck's sake! Atticus would have had to give his permission for Henry's grand escapade, and so of course he would have worn office attire. She would have thought Atticus would know better than to bother Scout when all she wanted was peace—that had been his strategy for dealing with her ever since she went up to Nashville—but evidently not. He let Henry follow her all the way there. That was fine, then. She no longer wanted to return to Maycomb for his funeral.

"Good morning, Scout," Henry said, still wearing that God damn smile. He couldn't get rid of it, even when he was trying to be serious. "I'd like to apologize to you."

"And I'd like you to fuck off," Scout replied.

Jack pressed his lips together. Scout recognized that face; he was trying not to laugh. So he could sympathize with her, at least a little. Still, to Henry, who had never seen it, it could be construed as an expression of condemnation, just as Jack would want. "Scout," Jack said, and after a moment his voice regained its usual firm composure, "please be civil. At least hear Henry out."

Scout settled for merely a glare in response as Henry's attention was momently diverted. "Oh, of course, Forgive me for not introducing myself. I'm Henry Clinton. You're Dr. Finch, I take it?" He was still so painfully genuine. How did he get along with every single person he met, when the very sight of Scout was enough to rub the majority of people the wrong way?

Jack kept his serious tone. "I am. Pleased to meet you. I've heard so much about you." Though he didn't turn away from Henry, Scout knew the statement was directed at her more than anything. "That said, I believe you have other matters to deal with?"

"Of course." Henry pulled out the chair beside Scout and sat down. Keeping her face blank, she pushed her own chair away from him. "Scout," he started, already pleading, "I'd appreciate it if you heard me out."

As if what Henry wanted mattered to her anymore. "And I'd appreciate it if you went straight to hell, but I imagine only one of us is going to get what they want." Beside her, she could see Jack stifling a grin. So that's why he'd really organized this, wasn't it? He wanted the entertainment. Well that was fine; less pressure on her to actually listen to whatever the bastard was about to say.

"Dr. Finch-" Henry started.

"I promised I could get Scout in front of you, Henry. I never said I could control her." He'd turned his smile from a look of amusement to a polite gesture of placation. That was fine. Her uncle could suck up to Henry as much as he wanted, as long as she didn't have to.

Henry turned back to Scout at that, and she kept her mouth shut. After all his years of dealing with her, she owed Jack that. She'd let Henry have his God damn statement, even if she didn't want to hear it. Then, he could leave, and she'd finally be free from Maycomb.

Henry stared at her for a moment, before looking into her eyes and lowering his voice. "Scout, I won't lie to you. I know better. Enough people have dismissed you because of your experiences and your attitude. I just hope that since I've listened to you, you'll be willing to listen to me."

Scout kept his eye contact, but refused to give him any response. A year ago, this would have had her melting. That was why she'd always liked him—he was always willing to work with her, the way she was. But now, she knew it was just a tactic, another lie. It would take more than just a token concession to earn her forgiveness.

"I know you hate Maycomb. I'm not so fond of it, either. But for all your misfortune, you've always had one luxury I haven't: this. You were able to move to Nashville and escape it. I've never been so lucky. Like it or not, Maycomb is the only home I've ever had. No one can blame me for being partial to my home, despite all its flaws.

"But you know how Maycomb is. It's not enough to have been born and raised there. You have to be bred right, raised right, and you have to act right. I'd already failed two of the three counts just because my father ran out on us. If I ever wanted to last in Maycomb, I had to at least try to act right.

"I'd never read about citizen's councils in the newspapers, like you. I didn't know what I was agreeing to. All I knew was I'd been invited to a meeting, that most of the town would be there, and I'd be a fool not to go. Once I was there, I couldn't walk out, not without the entire town hating me, and when I told Atticus about it the next day, he outright encouraged me. I wasn't lying about that, Scout. He said that it would be good to have someone like me there, just in case, and that it was important that I try to fit into the town. So I continued to go.

"I didn't like it, Scout. I never liked it. But you know how Maycomb is. It'll never change. As long as I live there, I have to blend in to survive. Otherwise, I'm just white trash, just like your aunt and all those other ladies say. If I want an ounce of respect in Maycomb, despite being fatherless trash, I have to keep going to council meetings. I'm sure you can understand."

Scout couldn't help herself. Not after what he'd said. So she burst out laughing.

She knew that telling Henry Clinton to fuck off would have been more polite, but that didn't stop her. It was just so damn ridiculous that all she could do was laugh until her stomach was sore and she could scarcely breathe. "I'm sure you can understand?" Like hell she could. Did he seriously think she could understand trying to fit in? So she laughed, until Jack stopped staring at her like he was going to finally put her in an asylum and she had ran out of breath.

"Scout?" Henry looked so confused, the poor bastard. He had thought he knew her so well.

"It's just funny. All of it. Henry Clinton, I didn't think you could get any more wrong." Just like that, she was laughing again.

"What on earth do you mean?" His face, too, was so concerned, so intrigued. Could he really not see how fucking absurd it was?

"Henry, did you really just say that I could understand trying to fit in? Have you seen me? The girl who fainted in the middle of class and wore slacks every day until people were surprised she hadn't started telling people she was a boy?" Scout couldn't help it, she was giggling again. She hadn't even giggled since she was six years old.

Henry's face only grew more sober, more passionate. "But none of that was your fault, not really. You still wanted to fit in. You still wished they didn't look at you like you were different; you told me that. You can't blame me for feeling the same way."

He really didn't get it. "Well no shit none of it was my fault, but what did Maycomb care? They still looked at me like that; they would have until the end of time no matter what." Her tone turned bitter and mocking. "The entire God damn town knew that Atticus Finch had gone and felt bad for a negro, and look what happened. His only daughter got fucked by a drunk and so badly mutilated they had to take out everything that makes a woman useful in the first place." At this, Henry openly gaped. "Oh, you know it's true. You really think that if things had been different, I wouldn't have ended up as a machine that spit out babies until I couldn't take it anymore?"

"Even Maycomb isn't that unforgiving-" Henry started.

"Oh, don't pretend there's anything good to the place. Don't even try to tell me it's worth earning their God damned approval. Those bastards can't stand anything less simple than a stick figure man and his stick figure wife." Her voice had dripped with pure disdain, but it suddenly turned serious. "I'm complicated. They look at me, and they figure I'm so complex I'd better be destroyed so nobody gets the wrong ideas. I need to be made to fit in with their pristine churches and hidden liquor stores and 50 cent theaters. Well look at how well that worked out. I can't look at any of those places without getting hit by one of a dozen awful memories."

Henry was calm, filled with the same projected empathy as always. "I can't pretend to know what that was like, Scout. But you've got to understand, all I wanted was-"

All of her control was gone, now. Even the swearing had been somewhat measured, slightly thought through, but now she shouted without any thought about her words. "Could you stop for a single second, and think about what I wanted? Because I can tell you. All I wanted was to get away from the grocery stores that pretend they don't have an illiterate negro working the till, and the courtroom that pretends it doesn't hold a citizen's council every fucking sunday, and the liquor store that pretends it doesn't sell the kind of stuff that makes a man think it's a good idea to shove his penis into a little girl. I couldn't look at those things without my head getting full of memories, and not normal ones, quick ones that were gone in a second. Horrible things that trapped me, and made me miserable. Do you know what it's like to feel like your life is just there to fill in the time between memories? The whole thing just leaves you so exhausted, like you're stuck in a living hell with no hope of ever getting out. And one day, I just decided I couldn't take it anymore. I was getting out of that God damn town, and I was getting out of it that instant. And if I wasn't fourteen years old and stupid, I would have."

Henry blinked, his face contorted with confusion. "What on earth are you talking about? You did get out. You got here to Nashville. And I only wish I'd been just as lucky."

"I'm not talking about Nashville, Henry," Scout snapped. "I never wanted to go to Nashville. I'm talking about this." She unbuckled her watch, and held out her left wrist, ignoring the way her arm tensed up at the idea of being so exposed. His eyes immediately found the scar, small and faded as it was. "It's not much, but like I said, I didn't know what I was doing. If I had, I'd be dead. Just like I wanted."

"Scout," Henry whispered. Suddenly all his charm was gone. There were no more smooth words, no more empathetic facial expressions, only hoarse, blank-faced horror. "Scout, I had no idea."

She put her watch back on before answering, fastening it slowly and adjusting it so that it perfectly covered the small white line. Then, without looking at him, she replied, "I know you didn't. Because if you did, maybe you would have thought twice before trying to please that town." She sighed, got up from the table, and pushed in her chair. "But you didn't. And I'm sorry, but I can't love someone who wants to please the place that nearly got me killed."

Scout looked towards Jack, who nodded, before walking into her room. As she closed the door, she stole one last look at Henry. He stared forward at the wall with empty eyes.

She closed the door, but pressed her ear against the door. Henry Clinton was a decent man, after all. At the very least, he'd talk things over with Jack.

Instead, Scout heard the sound of the phone being picked up and Henry's voice asking for the operator to connect him with Atticus Finch's office in Maycomb.

"Atticus? I don't think I'll be coming back for a while. In fact-" Henry's voice cracked. "I'm sorry, I know I said I would take over the firm for you, but I just—I can't. Not after talking with Scout. I don't know how you've run it for so long." He paused for a moment. "I'm sorry, Atticus. I just can't."


	15. Henry's Arms

_**So here we are. I've been postponing this chapter for a long time, because I hate endings. Also because I've been scoring some small-time publication for my flash fiction (read: stories under 1500 words), so naturally fanfic's had a lot less of a draw since it's not the thing that will (hopefully) eventually make me money. Anyway, this is all a way to say, goodbye folks. This was fun, and I'm actually pretty proud of it. I know ~33k isn't very impressive when compared to the 200k behemoths some people write (and I am very thankful for them), but considering I'm a writer whose comfort zone is under 1000 words and can only occasionally be convinced to creep up to 1500, I'm pretty damn proud of that wordcount. After the catastrophe that was my first novel, this has helped me regain some confidence. Whenever I finally manage to get the nerve to try novelling again, it'll be because of this. So thanks, everyone. This has been a pretty good ride, and honestly, I'm not sure if I'll ever do it again. I just wish I could offer you a better ending. I'm pretty bad at them.**_

 _ **Oh, and if anyone has been following this and not reviewing, leave one now, because otherwise, I don't know you exist! My brain is very good at convincing me the numbers in the stats tab are all lies, but it can't figure out a way that reviews would be faked.**_

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Scout had retreated to her bed after she heard the beginning of Henry's call. He deserved the privacy. Besides, knowing him, he'd talk everything over with Jack. It amazed her how much he relied on other people. He'd been like that for as long as she'd known him, always talking over something with Jem, desperate for another opinion so that he could figure out what was happening in his own head. Even before she'd been willing to tell him more than her name and that she lived in Nashville, he'd gushed at her constantly. He was always composed, even at his most puzzled-that was why she loved him after all-but he'd talked over entire legal cases to her, working out every detail right before her eyes. His thoughts had always made sense. They were complete sentences, one stemming perfectly from another, taking everyone's thoughts and feelings into account. He was a perfect mixture of intelligence and empathy. That was why she had loved him. This was the first time he hadn't figured everything out.

It wasn't his fault. He took cues from Atticus, and Atticus did what he thought was right. He always had. Perhaps he really had been stupid enough to think that it would help Henry to sit in the Citizen's Counsel. She couldn't know for sure. The two of them had avoided each other so clearly for years. Had Jack told Atticus why she did it? Did he know it was the town that almost killed her, not insanity, or the memories, or even the rape? He couldn't have known. Atticus still had faith in Maycomb. He always had. That was why he'd fought so hard in the fucking trial, why he stayed in Maycomb even when Scout couldn't take it. The man honestly believed that the town could sort itself out, and one day, it would be fixed. Scout had lost that hope years ago.

She had seen the look in Henry's eyes when she took off her watch. He was always animated, always wearing at least a slight look of empathy, amusement, or thought. Henry was never at a loss for words, always composed and presentable. Yet in that moment, his face had been completely blank. It was as if he'd lost the ability to even think or feel. Henry had thought he'd understood her, and that he'd understood everything. In that moment, he'd finally realized he hadn't.

His speechlessness was so vivid that Atticus must have been able to hear it through the phone, even all the way back in Maycomb. Through her bedroom door, Scout had heard it loud and clear. Henry hadn't resigned to please her, after all. He'd done it because he'd finally stopped believing in Maycomb. The hope was gone at last. It had died in an instant, taken away when he'd seen that negros and trash weren't the only people the town could hurt. Maybe Maycomb could change, but not any time soon, and not before damaging countless others. Henry had seen what Scout had known for years: it was too dangerous a place for either of them to wait around and hope it got better.

Henry could practice law anywhere, after all. Sure, he'd been trained in Alabama, but he'd passed the bar. Perhaps she could convince him to stay in Nashville. If not, there was always Atlanta, or New York, or even Montgomery. They could pick a place, get married, and spent the rest of their days in bliss. It would work out, in the end. She and Henry had already decided to marry once, after all. God knew they were a perfect fit. It had only taken this long for them to truly see each other, to truly realize each other's stances weren't their own faults. Scout had never wanted to hate Maycomb, after all. She wished she could have loved it. It had just been stolen from her in 1935, and nothing she could do would make her feel safe there again.

Henry had learned to idolize Maycomb, to compulsively seek its approval, but there was no flaw that could not eventually be undone. With her help, he would learn in time.

She found herself sitting on her bed, staring at the door, waiting for Henry to come through and sweep her off her feet. It didn't matter that such quick, complete touch would no doubt send her into a memory; that was what the heroes always did at the end of the movie when they'd finally won over the heroine. Henry was smarter, though. The more she thought, the more she realized Henry wouldn't dare. Scout was the one who'd won in the end, and besides, he knew better than to touch her. Someday soon, she would allow it, and allow it properly. They were going to be married, after all. With Henry, she could learn not to mind it.

So Scout opened her own door and the instant she saw Henry sitting at the table with Jack, she ran behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. There had been words she meant to say, but they became trapped in her throat. Soon, she and Henry would have to decide where they would live, if they would set a marriage date or just elope, if the two of them would ever return to Maycomb to tie up loose ends or if it wasn't worth the trouble. They would need to find a house, and new jobs, and a psychiatrist for Scout, but it would all come together in due time. In that moment, Scout stopped caring about any of it.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around Henry and despite every instinct she had and every rule she'd made, she drew him into a kiss. Even as his lips moved to meet hers and his hands grasped her waist, she felt the tug of memories beginning to encroach and she could already feel being transported to the Maycomb forest floor, but she pressed on regardless. One day, she and Henry would find a solution and she'd no longer be bound by the memories and the pills. For now, she was willing to brave opening old wounds. This kiss, though tainted, was the only way she knew to show Henry that she forgave him with all her heart and was ready to begin their future together.


End file.
